


Citizen Erased

by Jollysailorswan



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Army AU, Established Relationship, Gamer(2009) AU, Multi, Rated For Violence, Suicide Attempt, it doesn't really follow that plot though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-11-03 16:51:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10971381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jollysailorswan/pseuds/Jollysailorswan
Summary: 'Slayer' is the best game-based series broadcasted worldwide. But it's also the biggest sham in history.General Nikiforov, based on the country's national hero, is the most popular character they ever introduced. But he's also the man who tried to take everything down.Katsuki Yuuri is a soldier who always fights for what he thinks is right. But he also fights for the man he loves.





	1. I was me but now he's gone

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first serious attempt at a multichapter fic. You don't have to know much about the movie to read this cause it's been adjusted a lot to fit the story I wanted to tell. 
> 
> A big thank you to @piyo-13 who motivated me to give this a try and edited this like a champ! <3
> 
> I drew a lot of inspiration from music for this fic. The title is from the song Citizen Erased by Muse and the chapter title is from Fade to Black by Metallica. I would also like to recommend They Don't REally Care About Us by 2CELLOS (watch the official video, people).

_I was me but now he's gone_

_Fade to Black - Metallica_

 

**“Gamer Representatives announcing new ‘Slayer’ core character fashioned after Ingria’s National Hero General Nikiforov”**

 

**“General Nikiforov’s first stage - he surprises everyone by taking over team leadership mid-game”**

 

**“Nikiforov promoted to team captain after two weeks”**

 

**“Season Finale of ‘Slayer’ with game of 5 stages instead of 3 - Nikiforov expected to break his own record of kills per game and reach 25 straight wins”**

 

**“‘Slayer’ to premiere on December 25 - The General celebrates his birthday with a bang”**

 

**“Stage 34 - the moment the world thought the General was gone”**

  


He was breathing fast. The last barrage of bullets had left behind a cloud of dust that would take a while to settle. The smell of blood and sweat was familiar, yet he knew he would never get used to it. He had said once he hoped he would never get used to it. The glare of the sun blinded him for a second, and he cursed their luck for the assigned start point for his team.

(one very small part of his brain didn’t really care, had stopped caring around Stage 23)

He moved forward, over dead bodies,

(that small part inside of him catalogued the faces)

hiding low behind a military car that had seen better days. Weapon in hand, ready to take aim and fire. He took in his surroundings; scraps of metal lying around and debris from explosions amongst the dead. Behind him, three men and two women waited for his command. He was sure he knew their names. At the moment, each of them was a series of numbers and letters, a code unique to every player. 

(inside he was screaming their names) 

The last team of opponents for Stage 50 made their move. Two straight ahead, moving behind a large container, and one on the roof of the building at his one o’clock. If he had to make a guess about the other three, he’d say they would try to go around. He and his team were surrounded by abandoned buildings; it would be the perfect cover for the enemies to use to sneak up behind them.

He’d seen this strategy too many times.

He’d used it himself.

The only times it had ever worked was when he was the one leading.

(not just you)

He signaled for two of his teammates to have their eyes open for attacks from the back, or any sign of movement from the buildings to their left. He took in his surroundings once more. The one on the roof, the two behind the container. He smirked, thankful for his choice to grab that grenade launcher after slicing the throat of the previous team leader.

(you know him, he was on your team a week ago)

The sniper hadn’t seen him yet. He aimed the grenade launcher through the shuttered windows of the truck he was hiding behind, and straight into the open window on the last floor, at his one o’clock.

(that small part of his brain would have thrown away the launcher, grabbed his only still-loaded firearm, and put it in his own mouth) 

(he would have grabbed the bloodstained army knife from his boot and sliced his own throat.

Or maybe just walked into the crossfire) 

(he didn’t do any of that)

(he couldn’t.)

The dominant part of his brain had one goal: complete the mission.

He fired.

The first for the sniper. The second at the entrance of the building to his left. The third to the building right next to it.

* * *

 

The screen showed a picture of a young soldier with long, silver hair, wearing plain, military-issue training gear and a playful smile on his face. Then it changed to a man wearing medals of honour and the formal wear of a general, pristine and proud. And then to the picture of the same man, this time wearing the typical black-ops uniform, face covered in soot and blood.

_“General Nikiforov, the most popular character in ‘Slayer’, reached fifty straight victories as team leader last night.”_

The screen changed to footage of a conflict in the middle of a street. Nikiforov was leading the team, orchestrating the battle to his advantage, wiping the blood from his face with the back of his gloved hand and leaping over dead bodies to go for the next kill. His team of five followed him seamlessly. It was the only way to survive. 

_“This battle brought in a new record of viewership from West Eurasia. Twelve hours later, it’s the most popular topic of discussion in every network…”_

Then the screen showed the faces of Nikiforov’s teammates. All of their faces familiar. 

_“Even though the second wave gave them the opportunity for some really good hand-to-hand combat, most people had been looking forward to this last wave for more of that.”_

_“Indeed, usually after the first two waves the team is low on ammo, so for this stage the organisers thought they’d put three experts in the second wave to make things more interesting.”_

_“And then Nikiforov went and finished the game with three grenades in almost three minutes.”_

_“It was fast but definitely explosive. My question is, how did Nikiforov know the three commandos were in those buildings? Did he carry any sensors with him last night?”_

No.

_“The Gamer representatives assured us that that wasn’t the case. General Nikiforov is simply that good at anticipating his enemies’ moves.”_

_“Well, he managed a great feat last night. He’s the only character in the history of the series to stay alive this long. Everyone is sure his streak will continue at least for at least a few more weeks. But can he keep surprising the audience enough to stay, or will the company have to bring in new characters to make to playing field more interesting? Maybe another war hero?”_

“Yuuri.”

Phichit called for him from the door. Yuuri didn’t turn to acknowledge his friend, his eyes staying focused on the bloodied face of the silver-haired man on the TV. He heard Phichit’s footsteps bringing him closer, and felt the hand squeezing his shoulder.

“We’re ready to go whenever you are.” Phichit sounded tired, but his voice was still gentle. They’d all been working non-stop for months. Yuuri would pay them all back tenfold for their help on this mission, if they made it out alive.

_“The General is our pride and joy and we’d hate to ever see him go. Of course, we can’t control what happens in the game once it’s on air, only tweak some details, like which characters will play in each stage and what the stage will look like. Everything else is up to the characters.”_

“Pride and joy, my ass,” Phichit hissed at the screen.

Yuuri still stayed silent.

“Mari just got back to me with traffic intel. If we leave in twenty minutes, we should be at the hideout in St. Petersburg in five hours.”

Yuuri nodded and grabbed the controller to turn off the TV.

_“How likely is it to see some of the characters from past missions? People have missed that one guy who liked to get close and personal with knives.”_

_“We can’t do that, unfortunately. The software of the game was created this way in order to prevent a dead character from coming back. We could look into creating new characters with similar skills, though. Maybe we should put up a poll for the viewers to have a clear idea of what they would like to see?”_

Giacometti droned on and on about deadly ‘characters’, while the TV showed a picture of Nikiforov ready to launch a grenade to a building. Yuuri didn’t recognize the smirk on his face.

“Do you think I’ve lost him, Phichit?”

Phichit’s hold on Yuuri’s shoulder tightened. This was the one fear that made Yuuri hesitate in going ahead with their plan. If he was really gone, Yuuri wasn’t sure he wanted to know. 

“He isn’t considered a legend for nothing, Yuuri. He’s strong. And one of his greatest strengths is about to storm wherever they’re keeping him and blow up the whole place,” his friend answered with a wink.

“‘Blow up’ is putting it too strongly,” Yuuri snorted.

“Yeah, right.” Phichit patted him twice on the back before he turned to leave. “Don’t be too long. We’ve closed up everything and the cars are packed. We’re just waiting for you."

Yuuri was left alone again, eyes still on the screen in front of him. They were now discussing the next stage of Slayer, and if the company would ever consider creating games with different content. Yuuri grimaced, remembering the reports of what that _different_ content was rumoured to be. They had changed the picture of the General with the grenade launcher. Now, it was a picture of him after the end of the game, looking around the battlefield. His blue eyes stood out of the grime on his face.

They were empty.

“Hold on, Victor,” Yuuri whispered, in a voice meant only for the figure on the screen. “I’m almost there.”

He turned off the TV and threw the jacket he’d been holding over his shoulder. It wasn’t his. It didn’t fit him perfectly. But the memories it carried would help him get through the next few days, until the hardest part of their mission started.

* * *

 

Victor wasn’t surprised by the darkness when he woke up. Neither was he panicked by the inability to move his limbs. It had been like that for while, four months if he cared enough to calculate. A couple of suicide attempts - his hands pressing tightly around his own neck - were enough to convince his captors to put him under constant surveillance, and always have him tied to a bed. It made him sick, that they had driven him to anticipate the training sessions and even the games, if only for the opportunity to be allowed to move again.

Victor Nikiforov had never been a simple man. Son of one of the most important ministers of Ingria, born and raised in St. Petersburg during the early days of the Great Eurasian War, he had been expected to take an office job in the army once he became of age. Victor had refused to be treated like a special case, and enlisted to the Ingrian infantry against his parents’ wishes. Their dreams of greatness for their son weren’t enough for Victor. He had ideals, and he wanted to make it on his own, insisting on being treated as any other soldier.

Ten years later, Victor had flown through the ranks like they were nothing, honor after honor earned due to his own merit. He proved his worth during the heat of the battle, when his sound advice often lead them to victories that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. His promotions came one after the other, mostly because the higher-ups quickly recognized that they needed him to win the war on the East Eurasian front.

He made a name for himself, known for his habit to always sway battle plans against the unnecessary murder of civilians without sacrificing a positive outcome. _Do you want to make martyrs of our enemies and steal the title of tyrants from them?,_ he used to ask his fellow generals, all of them old enough to have seen more battles than him, but none with the strategic mind of the younger man.

He came back home a hero. The government gave him medals, the journalists went after him for exclusives, his parents bragged about their son, even though they had been ready to disown him when he made the decision to join the army. He barely cared about any of that. He made it to every obligatory appearance, put a smile on his face as if the world wanted him to forget the war ever happened - or more accurately, they wanted him to forget what war was really like. He even went along with his father’s insistence, and tried to immerse himself in the political scene of the country.

It didn’t take him long to realise that politics weren’t that different from war. Victor’s charisma in strategy and diplomacy helped him make friends in the highest classes of Ingria, which lead to him being privy to the government’s darkest secrets. He’d heard about a new scientific project going on during the last five years of the war. Something revolutionary, that would change the way the world worked.

(It was supposed to be something that would help them win the war. Victor listened to those rumors while on the battlefield, but in the end he didn’t have the patience to wait for new weapons to end the bloodshed.)

That same project kept coming up in conversations for months, and Victor kept wondering why the government continued funding it when they had already won. That is, until the conversations started to steer towards war prisoners and defectors being held in labs; until the name Polkov started coming up, the name of one of the most powerful Ingrian families.

And then a friend came to him and explained about the TV show, about the technology that controlled people’s minds, about the weapons that had been bought by Ingria’s government when they couldn’t see an end to the war and how those weapons were left collecting dust after the cease-fire. How people’s lives would be used in the cruellest way for money, and no one would know.

Victor didn’t even wait twenty-four hours to make plans. He spoke with his old contact from the Eastern front to gather more information, he put together a team of people he could trust, and they left for the one lab for which they had a confirmed location.

They had stormed the place under the cover of the night. They had saved over thirty people.

Victor had met Yuuri that day.

* * *

 

Their first mission could be considered a team effort. In truth, though, it was really out of necessity. When Victor’s team had arrived at the lab at Ekaterineburg, the place was in complete lockdown; commanders yelling orders, soldiers running around, and two helicopters flying overhead.

Someone had already stormed the place.

And they’d been discovered.

Since Plan A - entering the lab in secret -  was a bust they went ahead with Plan B - something along the lines of winging it, taking down the front gate and as many soldiers as possible with their two military-issue Conquest Evades, while Otabek tried to enter the security system through satellite and find the prisoners, or even the source of the whole commotion.

“General, we got in”, Otabek said and motioned for Victor to look at the screens in front of him. Otabek had hacked the lab’s security system and they had images from all the cameras. Victor watched as a team of five people fought heavily armed guards inside a building that looked a lot like a prison. They were quickly located, and Victor gave the order for the vans to drive there.

A dark-haired figure caught Victor’s eye. It was one of the soldiers, trying to help the prisoners escape, but he had abandoned his rifle and switched to hand-to-hand combat, taking down enemies like they were nothing and dancing around like he wasn’t wearing a kevlar vest and heavy weaponry. He was preventing guards from reaching one of the prisoners all by himself, and it was the most impressive thing Victor had ever witnessed.

He was amazing.

All the guards around the man were down by the time the two vans reached the building that was supposed to be the prison. Two of the mercenaries were trying to clear the way by shooting enemies left and right, but they were greatly outnumbered. Another guard came around the corner of the hall, gun ready to fire. The dark-haired man went straight for him, putting himself between the gun and one of the prisoners, a young man with blond hair. Victor didn’t have the time to watch more, however.

In the end, everyone was grateful for Victor’s “extra, show-off ass” and his insistence that they steal the sturdiest armored vehicles they could find at the base back in St. Petersburg for this mission. As they reached the right building, the team that had stolen their thunder was trying to clear the way for everyone to exit the building.

At first, they thought them enemies too, until they realised Mila and Georgi were shooting the lab guards, and one of the cars was swerving left and right to take out as many of their enemies as possible. The vans blocked the entrance of the building where the prisoners had been held, while Otabek, Yakov, Lilia and Georgi loaded people inside and Victor and Mila covered them. Two missiles took care of the helicopters. Soon, both cars were filled with injured soldiers, dressed in military uniforms Victor recognized as East Eurasia-issued, and prisoners, wearing simple gray uniforms. Victor didn’t recognize any of them as the dark-haired soldier or the blond kid.

“Vitya, Mila, we are ready to go,” Yakov yelled over the havoc of the guns and explosions.

“No, we didn’t get everyone. Georgi, Mila, cover me,” Victor said, before strapping his weapon around his shoulder and turning back in search of the dark-haired man and the prisoner that had been left with him.

He didn’t have to go far. Soon his eyes fell upon two figures, the smaller of the two, obviously one of the prisoners, trying to support the other. _That last guard must have done some damage_ , Victor thought, and ran faster to reach them.

“Run ahead, I’ve got him,” he reassured the blond kid with a faded red fringe and tears in his eyes, before wrapping both arms around the other man’s waist and lifting him over his shoulders.

The first car was already on its way out of the camp when Victor jumped through the open side door of the second one, still carrying the injured man. The door slid closed behind him, and he carefully laid the man down.

Victor took a good look at him for the first time. He was young, younger than Victor himself, and his features were probably very fierce when he wasn’t drenched in sweat and blood and white as a ghost. His dark hair was slicked back, with several strands falling astray and sticking to his forehead. He wasn’t unconscious, just breathing hard, small whimpers leaving his lips with every exhale. Yakov moved over, carrying his medical bag, and took to looking over the dark-haired man. The boy that had been with him was close nearby and crying, explaining with muffled words that the soldier had taken a bullet for him.

“Vitya, help me take off his vest,” Yakov said in his no-nonsense voice. Victor rarely took orders, but he knew not to go against Yakov when he was talking about things like this. He reached for the straps on the man’s vest while Yakov asked the boy questions about the soldier’s condition. The man’s moans of pain tugged at Victor’s heart. He’d seen his fair share of serious, life-threatening injuries in his time, but it never became easier to see another person in pain.

“Hey,” Victor whispered gently. “You’re safe now, we’ll put you back together in no time.”

The young man didn’t respond at first. Victor reached for Yakov’s bag to grab a pair of scissors. There was no way to pull the vest off him without disturbing his wound more than necessary, and the vest wouldn’t be useful again, anyway.

“Usually, that accent isn’t a sign of safety, where I’m from.” The soft voice startled him while he cut up the destroyed vest.

“I don’t blame you,” Victor chuckled. “I know my word might mean shit to you right now, but I promise. You are all safe.”

The man, still panting from pain and exertion, opened his eyes slightly. If Victor hadn’t been already convinced that the young man was an angel sent from the heavens, his soft but curious eyes would have been enough.

He took care of the rest of the vest under the scrutiny of weary, dark eyes, his hands shaking just a little as he proceeded to tear open the black shirt underneath to reveal the wound.

“I know you,” the man said, without elaborating.

“Vitya, hold him still.” Yakov’s voice was gruff. “I’ll put him under anaesthesia but I need to get the bullet out now, and we don’t have time to wait for that to work.”

Victor complied without wasting a glance to Yakov. His eyes were focused on the young man suffering in front of him.

“You have me at disadvantage, you know,” he teased as he moved behind the soldier and held him against his chest.

“Just because I know your name?” The other man managed to huff a tired laugh. “Who’s the one holding whom down?”

That laugh was enough to make Victor blush.

“Still, would you be kind enough to give me your name?”

Dark eyes didn’t look away from icy blue. Every exchange, every glance, every touch felt incredibly intimate, not something to be shared with ten other people in a crowded truck. Still, Victor couldn’t deny the electricity humming beneath his skin at the young man’s presence.

“Yuuri."

Victor smiled genuinely this time. As if he’d been given the greatest gift in the world.

“I’m sorry, Yuuri. This is going to hurt.”

Victor knew he didn’t have to say that. The grip of Victor’s forearms around Yuuri tightened as the injured soldier grasped at him. To borrow strength, to ask for comfort, to simply have a lifeline as Yakov started working on the wound, Victor didn’t know. He just kept his voice steady as he reassured Yuuri, who tried his hardest to keep silent, that everything would be fine and the pain would be over soon.

He was going to be okay.

Yakov was almost done cleaning and covering up the stitches when the anaesthesia finally worked, and Yuuri was almost unconscious in Victor’s arms, mumbling incomprehensible words. Victor thought he heard his name and something that sounded suspiciously like “pretty”. It made Victor’s heart race like it never had before, despite the situation. It didn’t take long before Yuuri was out cold.

Victor didn’t move from his place, but reached for one of the washcloths Yakov had left aside and gently cleaned sweat, blood and dust from the sleeping face. Yuuri evoked a newfound tenderness from Victor, and the ‘General’ couldn’t explain it. He just let these new feelings take over, filling his chest with more emotion than he’d felt in a long time.

He was aware their vehicle was still moving, and the team they had saved was leading them to where they’d left their own trucks. Yakov was moving around in the car treating wounds and checking the former prisoners to the best of his knowledge. Unfortunately, he wasn’t an expert in this new technology that controlled people’s minds, and so didn’t know exactly what to look for, but he tried nonetheless.

The blond-haired boy, Minami, as Victor soon found out, stayed close, feeling responsible for Yuuri’s condition.  After he was done cleaning Yuuri to the best of his ability, Victor motioned for Mila to bring him his jacket and threw it over them both, covering Yuuri’s tattered T-shirt. Mila gave him a knowing look before going back to her seat, but Victor didn’t pay her any mind. He knew what she was thinking.

The plan now was to reach the other team’s cars. Victor had already offered them shelter until they regrouped, but a man named Seung-gil, acting leader of the group since Yuuri was out of commission, insisted that they needed to be on their way immediately. They would only share the task of delivering the prisoners back to their homes out of Ingria

Victor looked at Yuuri’s sleeping face as it leaned against his shoulder. It wasn’t even that Yuuri, even tired and covered in filth, was the most beautiful person Victor had ever seen. It was his eyes and the slight shyness behind his pained smile. It was the mastery in his every move as he fearlessly defended those who needed him, inevitably taking a bullet for them.

It was the way Yuuri clung to him to draw strength as Yakov worked on him and the effort he put into keeping Victor’s eyes locked with his, as if to say “please, watch over me”. It was as if a mere touch sparked something much deeper than attraction, and he couldn’t explain it. For now he settled for holding a perfect stranger in his arms to keep him from jostling around in the back of the van. He knew that was just an excuse to keep holding him.

When they reached their destination at the edge of a forest and close to the road, he helped place Yuuri in one of the other team’s vans. Yuuri didn’t even stir, and probably wouldn’t wake up for a while. Victor wouldn’t get to say goodbye, and didn’t know if he would ever see him again, even though he asked Seung-gil to not hesitate to ask him if they ever needed help.

Victor watched the three cars drive away as the day was about to break. The light breeze blowing through the trees was chilly, but he didn’t mind it. He felt like his hope had been renewed, like he wasn’t fighting alone for a change. It wasn’t just one person with his team. Many more knew the ugly truth of what their world had become, during and after the war, and they wouldn’t sit back and watch everything burn.

As long as there were people like Yuuri, who would fight with their bare hands for what was right, the world had a chance. Victor smiled at the thought, and let the cold morning send shivers of delight up and down his spine, before he turned back to his team.

“Victor, I think you forgot your jacket with that injured guy,” Mila told him.

“I didn’t forget it”.

* * *

 

The events that followed led Victor to create an anonymous organisation that he funded himself, comprised mostly of mercenaries that worked tirelessly to free all the prisoners used in the program. Their team grew with the years; Seung-gil and the rest of the soldiers they helped that night soon joined them, Yuuri a little later.

(He tried to return Victor’s jacket, but Victor refused.)

More members and funds came from East Eurasian countries, since they were the most affected by what came to be known as ‘Slayer’, a TV show that broadcasted to the whole world. People knew it as a video game with an algorithm that generated characters who were pit against each other.

Very few knew that the characters were actual people being mind controlled. And that once killed in the game, the characters could never come back.

For over two years, the organisation did well, rescuing people from the labs and helping them go back to their homes.  They had tried a few times to go public with their information, but four different governments were involved, and things wouldn’t be solved that easily.

It would take the downfall of Victor’s entire organization and a few sacrifices for that to happen.

* * *

 

They’d been on the road for almost three hours when Yuuri pulled up next to Mari’s truck for their scheduled stop. He’d chosen to drive first so that he could try and sleep for the rest of the way there. ‘Try’ being the key word.

Yuuri leaned his forehead against the wheel and let out a shaky breath. He wasn’t sure the mess of anxiety and worry, a burden so heavy on his chest that he could barely breathe, would let him sleep. He knew the moment he’d close his eyes, nightmares would assault him - and he had a whole collection of terrors to choose from.

His team being caught at the border and killed before they could even reach St. Petersburg.

The headquarters collapsing all around them in gunfire and explosions as he and Phichit tried to salvage their only hope.

Victor’s voice over the radio as he surrendered.

Victor looking down at him, in his Slayer uniform, firing away without a single emotion in his eyes.

Yuuri had been battling with all the ways their plan could fail for weeks; he’d always been the more pessimistic one of the family. Not that Mari was the definition of optimism, but she leaned more towards realism, enough to often shake Yuuri out of his moods.

He would certainly have to try to get some rest, though. The stakes were too high to risk everything just because sleep deprivation had left him a dizzy ball of nerves.

Yuuri reached to the backseat and gently shook Phichit out of his slumber. He felt bad depriving his friend of his much-needed sleep, especially after all the work he’d been putting the last few months on finalising the cure, but he knew he wouldn’t hear the end of it if he let Phichit sleep and drove all the way to St. Petersburg right before he was about to embark on the hardest mission - it was more a gamble than a mission, Mari had argued many times - he would ever take on.

After a thirty minute break for coffee for Phichit, a cigarette for Mari, and some fresh air for Yuuri to clear his head, they were back on the road, Phichit behind the wheel and Yuuri in the backseat, huddled under the brown leather jacket. Still afraid to close his eyes, Yuuri silently observed Phichit.

His friend was young, barely over twenty-seven. He could have had such a bright future after the war, when everyone and their mothers thought scientific advancement was the right way out of the misery that mayhem and bloodshed had spread.

In a way, it had been, but the consequences had been more dire than most people truly realised.

So here was Phichit, with a ‘one of a kind’ mind, too intelligent and too kind for his own good, wasting away with bags under his eyes and slightly bad posture from overworking himself.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri whispered, turning to look out the window at the passing lights.

“Yuuri, we’ve had this conversation,” Phichit teased him. “We need you to be as rested as possible before storming into that hellhole. Or are you forgetting in your old age?”

“Thirty isn’t that old,” Yuuri complained. “And you know what I meant."

Even from the corner of his eye, Yuuri could see Phichit’s face falling, his friend’s expression matching his own.

“I know. But we’ve had this conversation, too, so maybe I should start you on some new medication, since your geriatric symptoms are so advanced.”

Yuuri didn’t answer. He didn’t take any offense to Phichit teasing him like that; he actually welcomed it, because it seemed to lift some of the tension.

“Ah, Yuuri, you know I’m exactly where I want to be. I know you like to blame yourself for dragging me into this mess, but I wouldn’t have joined you if I didn’t want to.”

“I know, but still, I can’t help thinking where you might have been now if you hadn’t met me.”

“Probably dead. Or maybe I would have survived that raid and been taken prisoner to work for those douchebags we’re about to take down. Or maybe I would have survived and learned of what Victor was trying to do and joined either way, ‘cause you and I are more alike than you think.”

“Or maybe you would be back home, trying to make a difference there,” Yuuri offered bitterly.

“You mean Thailand?”

“Yes.”

Phichit seemed to think that scenario for a while. Yuuri didn’t dare look at him, afraid he would finally see regret on his face.

“I will always love my country,” Phichit spoke again, his voice serious now, missing that teasing tone that was one of the best parts of his personality . “I do miss it, and I know I will probably end up going back sometime after all this is over. But I have three very important reasons for being here, Yuuri.”

“You want to do the right thing.”

“That’s one, I guess. Although it’s more along the lines of me being too idealistic for this world, and if I have a chance of making it better, then I won’t rest until I do. I may only be twenty-seven, but this cure is my life’s work, Yuuri. One day I will be able to announce to everyone that I, Phichit Chulanont, a lowly doctor from Thailand, was able to create the one thing that could counter mind control and saved thousands of people from certain death. And I will be hella proud of it, and accept all the awards and all the credit.”

Yuuri smiled at Phichit’s boast and conviction, and thought to himself that he couldn’t wait to see that day.

“The second reason is that I am also very much like Victor, in that regard. After the war, he could have stayed home with his money and his medals and honors and been free and safe, and yet he gave all of that up to convince war veterans and brainiacs like me and Mari and all sorts of people to make the world a better place. I’ve always admired him for that. And remember, you’re not the only one who knows that he basically sacrificed himself to them so that we could escape with the research. It’s not just that I like the guy, ‘cause even beyond all that idealistic crap, he’s a good guy and fun to be around. We all owe him too much to let him be used like that until he dies from a bullet or his own grief.”

That took Yuuri by surprise. He’d never heard Phichit talk so much about Victor. He knew he’d respected the ‘General’ since the beginning, and that they got along just fine, but Phichit had never shared those thoughts with Yuuri in such detail. It made him wonder if, with everything that had been happening over the last year, he’d neglected his friend.

“The third reason I’m doing this is you.”

Yuuri’s head snapped back to look at Phichit.

“You said I could be home now, but I bet if I asked you where _you_ think you home is, you wouldn’t be able to pick just a place.”

Yuuri didn’t have to think about it to admit that Phichit was right. Home had stopped being a place a while ago. Home wasn’t something you left behind, but something you gave away; a piece of your heart that belonged to those you knew would take care of it.

A piece of Yuuri’s heart was back in Japan with the rest of his family. Mari held another piece. Phichit and everyone else from their team, people who had grown to be more than just co-workers, into something that resembled a family, also held some.

And another, larger piece of his heart was hurting in Victor’s bloodied hands.

Phichit smiled at Yuuri through the mirror in front of him.

“You’re my brother, Yuuri. And you’ve been missing half of your home for way too long. It’s time we go get it back.”

 _This is why we keep fighting,_ Yuuri thought. _Because there are still people like Phichit. Because there’s still good in this world._

Yuuri’s previous apology turned into gratitude. He whispered a heartfelt “thank you” and buried himself under the brown leather jacket and a blanket and let sleep take him, nightmares be damned.

* * *

 

The training area was the only other room Victor was allowed in. It occupied the whole second floor of the lab, a big open area filled with training machines, fighting gear, and a shooting range. While training, his movements were once again predetermined by the orders given to his brain, but that didn’t stop him from trying to steal glimpses of the outside world through the windows, during his first few weeks there. After a while even that dreary sight of his hometown became a  kind of torture, and he just kept his head low like everyone else.

About twelve more people were training with him, some of them at the shooting range with him, others lifting weights,

(as if big muscles will save them from grenades)

a few being smarter and practising hand-to-hand.

Victor, though,  avoided that like the plague. The memories of training for hours upon hours—finding out more about his own heart every time Yuuri pushed him into the mat with a beautiful, kind smile and shining eyes, giving back as much as he took while pinning the dark-haired soldier with his body—would either make him sloppy, or else drive him insane to the point of losing all control against his opponents.

So he stopped. And the higher-ups noticed and tried to put him in situations during the games where hand-to-hand would be his only solution to survive.

One more kind of torture.

An alarm went off, and it only took half a minute for the order in his head to change from ‘train’ to ‘detain intruder’.

(did anyone else wonder why the order was ‘catch’ and not ‘kill’?)

He started running, gun still in hand, as his mind tried to make sense of the information sent with the order of the intruder’s location.

(who would be crazy enough to sneak into the lab?)

(and alone?)

It felt like a live feed of the security cameras was being broadcast into his brain; he knew exactly where to go. Other prisoners and guards ran with him out of the training area and down the stairs to the first floor, where there were only medical facilities and a few conference rooms.

The intruder was close.

A left here.

Then a right.

And at the next left turn, Victor raised his elbow and hit the intruder in the face. The man fell down with a groan, his own speed making the hit harder. Victor pulled the safety of his gun and pointed at the intruder’s head, but the stranger kicked the gun away before turning to throw a swift punch at Victor’s side.

(I know that move)

Everything happened too fast after that. His brain was focused on fighting against the intruder’s attacks.

(I know these moves)

It wasn’t that hard to anticipate and block. It wasn’t really a fight, more like a sacred dance shared only by them.

(and that part inside him that was chained to a wall and left to suffer screamed)

He couldn’t see his opponent’s face. The man was wearing a dark mask over his mouth and nose and a hood over his head. But if it hadn’t been the fighting style that Victor knew like a second language, it would have been his own moves used against him. And if not for that either, it would have been the weathered leather jacket.

Victor’s eyes followed every move, elated and terrified at the same time. Because he’d missed him, more than anything else.

More than home and more than freedom and more than peace, he’d missed him.

But the guards and the rest of the prisoners were closing in, and the order of ‘detain’ and not ‘kill’ didn’t do much to reassure him. He wasn’t sure if his inability to breathe was because of the strain of fighting, or a panic attack that even an implanted order into his brain couldn’t force away.

_“Mission: Complete. Stand down”._

“On your knees, hands in the air,” a guard yelled, hitting the intruder on the back of his head with his gun.

More guards appeared, and put the intruder in chains. Victor stood there, unable to do anything but stare with rising fear and despair. Footsteps echoed down the hall while he stood paralysed, begging the intruder to raise his head and allow him a glimpse of his eyes. He had no doubt who was under that hood. He knew those eyes would be liberation and pain at the same time. And for the umpteenth time, he wished for the ability to move on his own, to either save them both from this hell or die trying.

A tall man in a suit stepped between them, stealing from Victor that last piece of hope.

“That was quite the show,” the newcomer said, cheekily.

(Giacometti)

“He gave you a run for your money, General. Maybe you should stop avoiding using your hands during training.”

Victor didn’t respond. An order to ‘stand down’ meant complete immobilization; all he could do was keep his fists clenched and try to control his tremors.

“As for you,” Giacometti addressed his prisoner, kneeling down in front of him. With swift moves, he pulled down the hood and tugged off the mask. The face underneath was schooled into an emotionless mask.

A mask Victor would never get used to seeing; it seemed so alien, compared to the multitude of emotions usually present.

Victor had no outside response to seeing Yuuri’s face for the first time after so long.

“You are exactly what we need.”

No response except for the tears that filled his eyes as Giacometti rose to his feet again and gave the order. Two guards grabbed Yuuri’s arms and pulled him up before leading him away. Victor’s head was still bowed, staring at the spot where Yuuri had been kneeling, and he didn’t step aside for the guards to pass as they led Yuuri to a cell to wait for his operation. 

The dark-haired man brushed against Victor’s side as he walked by, and the touch made the tears in the General’s eyes escape. They didn’t stop running down his face on his way back to his own cell, nor after he’d been chained down once more.

_With time the child draws in,_

_this whipping boy done wrong._

_Deprived of all his thoughts,_

_the young man struggles on and on._

_The Unforgiven - Metallica_

 


	2. For you I have to risk it all

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience! It took a while but chapter 2 is here and I'm quite pleased with it.
> 
> This chapter wouldn't be half as good as it is without Piyo13's mad beta skills <3
> 
> Also, a big thank you to lillpon for her help and support <3
> 
> This chapter's songs are Enter Sandman by Metallica and Writing's on the Wall by Sam Smith
> 
> (Disclmaimer: I don't own anything YOI related.)

_Sleep with one eye open, gripping your pillow tight_

Enter Sandman - Metallica

 

Christophe Giacometti had always been very open with regards to his thoughts and feelings, and he’d loved it that way. His talent at lying, however, had lead him to a line of work with far too many restrictions.

He watched as the ‘intruder’ was dragged away by the guards.

He watched as the General stood still, unable to move and awaiting the next order.

And all he could do was go with the plan.

“Give the order for the prisoners to return to their cells”, he said into his radio.

A few seconds later, the prisoners obeyed the silent order in their heads, and the guards followed them back down to the basement where they were being kept. The General was the first to move.

(good)

Chris shook his head. Something had gone either perfectly right or terribly wrong—which one, depended on how you wanted to look at the situation—when it came to Victor’s operation after he was captured. His response to orders was faster than any other prisoner’s, though as far as Chris was aware, the operation to implant the nanotechnology in his brain had been the same, basic procedure as always. He tried not to think how that could affect the plan; for now, he had a job to do.  

It didn’t take long to find their prisoner’s cell. Two guards were standing outside, and Chris waved them away before entering through the steel door.

They’d strapped him down to a metallic gurney. He was still in his own clothes, and the fluorescent light shone off the perspiration on his exposed skin and the blood dripping from a wound on his mouth. He was breathing hard, eyes closed and fists clenched, as if he was trying hard not to start thrashing around to get out of his bonds.

Chris closed the door with a sigh and leaned against it, counting down ten seconds to make sure the guards would be far enough away.

“That went well,” Chris said, and took a few steps forward to reach the bed at the corner of the small, badly lit room.

The other man didn’t respond.

Chris checked his watch and rushed forward, grabbing at restraints and pulling them.

“We don’t have much time,” he said while grabbing the dark-haired man’s arm to pull him up. His new prisoner was still shaking and refused to look him in the eye.

“Yuuri?”

Yuuri didn’t respond. With still-trembling hands, he reached for his jacket’s inner pocket to pull out a black box.

Chris didn’t need any explanation. He took the box and hid it inside his own suit jacket.

“We don’t have much time. They are going to come and take all your personal belongings soon before they take you in for surgery. I’m supposed to be doing a quick interrogation before that, and I need to record it, but they will do a more extensive one after the surgery, when you can only tell them the truth. Do you have anything else you want me to take?” Chris asked with a hand on Yuuri’s shoulder.

Yuuri just shook his head and lay back down.

“Alright, then,” Chris sighed, and fastened the straps again around Yuuri’s hands and legs. “Okay, let’s get on with it. You don’t have to answer everything now, they will just think you wanted to resist, but you can say what we talked about last time.”

The whole thing took about three minutes of Chris putting up the mask; a mocking and slightly bored tone of voice, which made Yuuri flinch. _I was working alone, I was desperate, I just wanted him out, you won’t get away with this._ No one expected any more than that at this point, and the council would prefer to keep a prisoner in good condition for surgery instead of torturing him. Yuuri could tell them more details, the details he _wanted_ to share, later, when they would think he was under their orders.

Chris stopped recording and sighed, letting the mask go. He stalled for a moment at Yuuri’s bedside. He didn’t want to leave so soon, but the whole plan depended on how he handled the next few hours, and they still had too much to lose.

“It’s good to see you again despite everything, Yuuri,” he said, and squeezed Yuuri’s hand one last time before turning to leave.

Yuuri finally found his voice before Chris could open the door.

“Chris?”

Chris turned to look at his old friend.

“Is he okay?” Yuuri’s words were heavy, almost choking him with emotion.

Chris pulled his hand away from the door. He wasn’t sure what to answer, because no, Victor wasn’t okay.

“I haven’t seen him in a while, to be honest. With everything going on, I tried to not do anything too suspicious. And after today, I don’t know what state I’ll find him in.”

“How much are you going to tell him?”

“Not much. Phichit told me it would be better if I didn’t give him a lot of new information, and he can’t know everything in case they suspect him for something and decide to interrogate him without me around. This is too risky, Yuuri.”

Though it wasn’t reassuring, Yuuri still seemed to accept that this might be the only answer Chris could give. Yuuri turned to look at Chris for the first time, and Chris was hit with the sheer amount of strength his friend hid behind all that worry and anxiety.

“It’s good to see you again, too, Chris,” Yuuri offered with a smile.

Chris smiled back, a blessedly genuine smile after so long, and for a moment he was free.

Soon, they would all be free again.

Then he schooled his expression back to nothingness, and turned away from his friend, opening the door and leaving that hopeful moment behind.

* * *

 

Chris had been in the know about the mind control program from the beginning. His “friends” in high places shared way too much with him, either under the assumption that they were dealing with an ally and a supporter to the idea, or else under the influence of one too many glasses of brandy. Chris was too good at keeping himself calm and collected during such conversations to raise any suspicions, as much as it was killing him inside. Once he had gathered enough evidence and information, he went to Victor. 

Chris had met Victor during one of his trips to the front as Helvetia’s ambassador. He’d been charmed by the young General with the idealistic view of the world, whose only goal was to free Eastern Eurasia from the tyrant government who’d taken over years ago, with as few casualties as possible, and then go home.

It wasn’t often that Chris encountered someone with such ideals in his circles. He’d been brought up in a family of fierce politicians in Geneva, his shoulders heavy with expectations of following the same life. People, however, react differently to expectations. Some follow them to the letter. Others, like Victor, make their own way to the same goal. And then there are the rebels. That’s what Chris tried to do; shake off his family’s legacy by ignoring his studies and and partying his way through university. Until he saw his bank accounts empty and an ultimatum over his head forcing him to choose.

He chose his father’s way, becoming an ambassador to the front. At least there, he wouldn’t be directly under his family’s thumb. A few years later, Chris declared it the best decision of his life.

Even though Chris didn’t want to have anything to do with being a politician, he was too good at politics for his _own_ good; he knew by instinct that lying was the best way to make it and gain what you want. He didn’t like it, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t a talent of his. It was a talent he cursed many times, and tried his best not to use—until he realised he could utilise it in a good way.

The first time he did it was when he probed and pushed the higher-ups into revealing more details about the ‘Slayer’ program. The second was when he announced that he would get involved in the program to try and smuggle as much information to Victor as possible. He quickly ended up in the council of the Gamer company, making public announcements and taking on interviews about the game.

‘Our most valuable weapon’, Victor had called him once, during one of his visits to the headquarters, which were few and far between. And Chris realised that Victor wasn’t exactly wrong in calling him that, when most of the information about the labs came from him, and he made it so their hackers could gain access to secret databases with even more information about the science behind mind control.

Chris knew about his worth in Victor’s organisation, but the truth was that their success was mainly a product of everyone working together, like gears in a well-oiled machine. A machine he was proud to be part of. Even if it led to him feeling like a traitor most of the time, when he was wearing a proud smile in front of the cameras while representing the enemy, and even if it kept him away from the people he loved.

“How do you do it?” Victor had asked Chris while sharing a glass of wine during that same visit at the headquarters, after they’d been left alone.

“Do what?” Chris looked at his friend, who was staring at his glass with an unreadable expression.

“All of it. The lies, the sneaking around…” he trailed off.

 _The staying away from the one you love,_ Chris thought to himself. He knew that was what Victor wanted to ask. Because Victor had done the lies and the sneaking around, too, and he didn’t need to ask such things.

Victor and Yuuri had been in the pining states of their relationship, back then. Yuuri had only joined the team a couple of months previously, and the moment Chris had seen them together for the first time, he couldn’t help but shake his head with disbelief. They were these blushing messes every time their eyes met, and it was adorable seeing two soldiers like them act like teenagers around each other.

It gave Chris hope that maybe even in times like these, people would still search for something beautiful.

“We all choose our battles, Victor. We all do our best here. My job is to play around with the suits, your Yuuri’s job is to keep your ass safe when you go on missions, and your job is to keep us all together.”

Victor rolled his eyes, but Chris didn’t miss the slight blush on his cheeks.

“None of this is easy,” Chris continued. “We all do this because we can’t imagine ignoring this mess.”

Victor nodded. He knew better than anyone how someone could dedicate their whole life to a cause bigger than their own self. Chris was grateful that he had been given the chance to know how that felt.

“Victor,” Chris said reaching out to grasp his friend’s shoulder. There was a fear in Victor’s eyes that Chris had never seen before.

“I know what we all do is dangerous. There’s no guarantee it won’t blow up in our faces. It’s all good and well to fight for the greater good, but having something else to fight for… it isn’t a crime. Especially when it makes fighting the whole world easier.”

Victor took a moment to answer.

“I’ve never been scared of losing someone like this. I know he’s too good to let something happen to him, and I should trust him to take care of himself, and it’s not like we're anything to each other, for me to have any right to worry about this, but...”

“Seriously?” Chris interrupted. “I was in the room with the two of you for five minutes and I could tell there’s no way your feelings for each other are entirely platonic.”

Victor sighed and refilled his glass. _May as well. It’s been a long night,_ Chris thought.

“It’s terrifying, isn’t it?” Chris mused.

Falling in love.

“And amazing,” Victor agreed, a hesitant smile appearing on his face.

“You know, when I met Marcel, I hated him,” Chris chuckled. “I’d seen him around the council’s office with his mother, being the dutiful son who became a lawyer just to pull his family out of the mud when they needed it.”

“I remember,” Victor laughed. “You were so frustrated with him, with his puppy dog eyes that you were so sure hid the devil himself. Until ‘puppy eyes’ found you out, and all he did was beg you to save him from his mother”.

“Yeah. Did I ever tell you that’s when I kissed him for the first time?”

“Chris, damn you, you couldn’t wait to make sure he wasn’t lying at least?” Victor reprimanded with amusement.

“No, my friend.” Chris got serious again. “In times like these, we can’t afford to wait when our hearts know.”

Later that night, Yuuri, eyes shining and heart racing, knocked on the door of Victor’s office, where the general had stayed behind, after Chris left for his own room, to psych himself up for something very important. Victor opened the door and Yuuri was faster than Victor only by a few seconds when he buried his hands into soft, silver hair and pulled him into their first kiss.

And then an alarm tore through the silence of the headquarters.

* * *

 

Chris wasn’t sure he was ready for what he was about to witness in Victor’s cell. It took him a while to manage to get away from the meeting that Yuuri’s break-in had sparked. Under different circumstances, he would have made sure to reassure Victor first, but he had the very important job of making sure everything would work as they planned it.   

He’d woken up every member of the council, insisting that they come over immediately for an emergency meeting. Then he ordered Yuuri to be taken in for the surgery, and hoped his friends had been right, that they wouldn’t be able to control Yuuri after it was done. It was time for him to play his part again, but he felt pride when he saw that Yuuri was calmer when he was being wheeled away from his cell than he’d been when Chris had visited him.

Then Chris had to deal with the council. Thankfully, it didn’t take him long to convince the assholes that ‘his’ plan was a good one, and soon they were gone and he was free to do something more important.

There were no guards outside Victor’s cell. They’d stopped checking in on him every thirty minutes a while ago, when everyone had assumed they’d finally broken the General. Chris prayed every day that they were wrong, and that seeing Yuuri being captured wouldn’t be the last straw for his friend.

He opened the door gently, and was met by a sight he was tired of seeing. Victor was strapped to his bed, restraints over his arms and legs, looking up at the ceiling. What he hadn’t seen in a while were the tears on his friend’s face. He’d thought Victor had reached rock bottom when they had ordered his constant immobilization, and Chris had seen the light leave his friend’s eyes when he’d realised he had no other way to escape.

(escape as Victor meant it, was death)

Chris had visited Victor then, too, to try and give him some hope, something to hold onto. He couldn’t tell him that Yuuri and Phichit were still trying to find the cure. He refused to give Victor false hope. But he wouldn’t let him think he was alone.

“Why are you still here?” Victor had whispered with strained voice. “You can leave now, take Marcel and get out of here, don’t let them kill you too.”

“I’m not leaving this place without you,” he tried to say, before Victor interrupted him.

“I’m a lost cause, you know they won’t allow me to leave.”

“As long as I’m here, you’re not a lost cause.” Chris raised his voice. “As long as there are people out there fighting, you’re not a lost cause, Victor. Trust me. Trust _him.”_

Victor had tried to look away, but Chris wouldn’t let him.

“I won’t presume to know exactly what you’re going through. I only know that all I can do for now is stand back and watch you lose a part of yourself every time you enter that battlefield, and pray you don’t get killed before we find a way to get you out of here. But please, hold on. If not for your own sake, then do it for Yuuri.”

And the tears had run from his eyes.

Maybe that was the moment that Victor truly got lost inside his own mind. There had been a change in him that Chris could recognize, even when his friend was acting under orders. There was a coldness that hadn’t been there before, like all the fire inside him had been snuffed out. And for months, Chris worried that his friend was truly gone, even blaming himself for pushing him during his last visit. He would have tried to speak to him again if it hadn’t been imperative that he stay inconspicuous before they finalized their plans and set them in motion.

And now Victor was crying again. His face was wet with tears that wouldn’t stop, and Chris, even though he wasn’t a violent person, wanted to punch something or someone, whomever held the blame for all the pain he’d witnessed the last three years.

“Oh, Victor,” Chris whispered, and approached the bed.

Victor didn’t react. He made an eerie image, the man with the light in his hair and magic in his eyes, barely breathing, imprisoned like some exotic, precious beast, and crying in silent pain.

When Chris was close enough, he tried to wipe the tears from Victor’s face, but he couldn’t stop them from falling again. Victor still didn’t take his eyes from the ceiling.

“Victor, please talk to me. I know this is a shock, and I’m sorry that I couldn’t tell you what was going on, we had to be careful with this.”

“Why are you here now, then?” Victor asked, still not looking at Chris.

Chris sighed. Viktor was reacting just fine, so the shock of seeing Yuuri hadn’t done any damage to the chip, as far as he could tell.

“Because of this.” Chris took the black box Yuuri had given him out of his jacket and opened it. Inside the box were three syringes, each containing a clear liquid, and Chris took one in his hand before tucking the box away again.

“Phichit did it, Victor. They found the cure.”

Victor finally turned his eyes  to Chris.

“What?” he said with disbelief.

“They did it. They tested it and it works. Yuuri brought this with him.”

Victor still looked at Chris, stunned.

“I don’t have much time, and this will take a long time to work,” Chris said, pushing up the sleeve of Victor’s T-shirt.

“Where is Yuuri?”

“I’m sorry, Victor, I can’t tell you much,” Chris answered while trying to remember everything Phichit had told him to be careful about while injecting someone. “You knowing too much information might cause damage to your brain, with the chip and all.”

“You think I care, at this point?” Victor snapped.

“Everyone else does, that should count for something. Now take a deep breath."

Victor hissed in pain when Chris injected him.

“You can’t just not tell me anything.”

“Victor, please, I know none of this is fair, but we have to be careful, not only with your brain, but with what information they can take from you, too. All you need to know right now is that everything is going according to plan, and that Yuuri will be fine. You know he can take a lot, especially for you.”

“This isn’t me doubting Yuuri’s abilities, this is me freaking out over seeing the man I love imprisoned in the one place I never wanted him to be!”

“I know. And I can’t promise you that everything will be fine. But I can guarantee you that we will all try our best, and that we won’t stop until we bring these bastards down once and for all. And we need you for that. It'll only take a little bit longer.”

Victor closed his eyes, and more tears fell. Chris brushed them away.

“Try not to overdo yourself for a few days. We don’t want any complications with the chip.”

Victor nodded.

“And please, don’t freak out when you see Yuuri again. Try to act normal, alright?”

“I won’t have much of a choice,” Victor said, bitterly. “I’m guessing whenever I see him next, I’ll be acting under orders again. Not much I can do about that.”

“Sometimes our bodies say a lot, even if we don’t mean for them to.”

 _And you’ve never been the best at hiding your feelings for Yuuri,_ Chris thought, as a fresh wave of tears stained Victor’s face.

“I need to go make sure everything else is okay. I’ll try to come back in a few days to see how you’re doing,” Chris said, and turned to leave, understanding that his friend needed time, a lot of time, to sort himself out.

“I’m sorry for being so ungrateful,” Victor said before he could open the door.

Chris smiled back at him. He wasn’t used to Victor apologizing.

“You don’t have anything to be sorry for. Just hang on, okay?”

Victor just nodded again, and that was all Chris needed.

* * *

 

When Yuuri woke up, it was to the beeping sound of machines, fluorescent lighting that hurt his eyes, and intense, throbbing pain at the back of his head. It took him some time to remember where he was, under the haze of painkillers and the remaining effects of the anaesthesia. Images flashed in his mind, of being taken away, still strapped to the bed, much calmer after talking with Chris, even though he didn’t get much reassurance from him.

Yuuri closed his eyes and focused on trying to settle his mind. Phichit’s words rang in his ears. _The enzyme is already in your brain, but it will take some time to be effective. Whatever anaesthesia and painkillers they give you should help, but please try to stay as calm as possible until Chris can check to see that it worked._

So Yuuri tried to go back to sleep. There was no point staying awake, in a badly lit, empty room, falling victim to his own miserable thoughts. But he couldn’t help wondering about Victor.

Seeing Victor again had shaken him. Television had the gift of making something seem fake, not real. Seeing him so close, feeling his presence after all these months, had made him real again. Everything about him was so familiar, yet so different; hair longer, tied halfway up in a small bun, skin pale and tight, eyes dark and emotionless. But the way he moved and responded to Yuuri’s attacks, like they still were back in their own gym, messing around—the despair Yuuri found in those blue eyes before the guards had taken him away, the faint electricity that ran through him the moment they’d brushed against each other one last time. All those things woke Yuuri’s instincts, and he didn’t know how he managed to not throw himself into Victor’s arms.

Because his Victor was still there. Even if it pained him to think of how much the man he loved was hurting, relief washed over Yuuri at the knowledge that maybe he hadn’t been too late. Victor was broken and drained, that much was obvious. But it would be a cold day in hell before Yuuri let him be completely gone.

He would do anything, endure anything, risk everything, fight harder than ever before for this plan to work.

All they could do now was wait for the cure to work, and then they would riot.

Yuuri was used to being a rebel for a cause. Usually it was just about doing the right thing; this time it was more personal.

And that only made him more determined than ever.  

* * *

 

The war that had broken out when Yuuri was three years old wasn’t a simple dispute between two sides over money or land. It had begun with a cry for help, from a team of the remaining strong families of the countries that had been taken over and all but erased by Katsuki Dynasty.

The first wave of attacks came from easternmost parts of Ingria, funded in large part by the Easterners. Yuuri’s father, Toshiya Katsuki, was the Emperor’s cousin, but he was very removed from the political scene, mainly because he didn’t agree with the way things were run. When he and his wife saw the opportunity to rise against the dynasty, they offered all their money to the rebellion. With his wife, Hiroko, trained by her own family in the arts of war, they were willing to participate in drafting rebels and helping them reach the newly-created fronts at the borders of Kina and Ingria. That first effort had been easily thwarted, and most people thought the Emperor would just try to kill the rebellion by weeding out its source—but then the Empire attacked Ingrian lands for retribution.

Ingria couldn’t let that slide, and that was when the war truly began.

Toshiya and Hiroko continued to be the silent force behind the rebellion in East Eurasia, sending information to the Ingrian and later the Helvetian army, and organising troops that worked from the shadows to sabotage the Emperor’s forces. Their children, Mari and Yuuri, had grown up in that environment. Both learned how to fight and protect themselves from a young age. Mari also showed promise in computers and finding vital, confidential information, and quickly took over that department. Yuuri worked with the troops, spending more time away from home than his parents really wanted, but they wouldn’t stop him.

Yuuri joined the troops knowing full well that his name was a double-edged sword. Being a Katsuki among rebels was a little dangerous; he couldn’t know when anyone would try to take all their rage for the Emperor out on him. A few soldiers had, in fact, tried to bully him, but they didn’t have time to deal with such childish things on the front. War forced them to leave behind their families, their pasts, their connections, and many times their own selves. They were constantly on enemy ground, watching out for each other, like a pack of wolves that were stronger together than apart.

Yuuri even forgot about his anxiety, most of the time. Of course, it hit him hard during the quiet nights, when a small fire and the snoring of his teammates were his only company, but he didn’t have time to think about his own shortcomings under fire or pressure. Everything had to be perfect for them to survive, and so it was. There was nothing else in his mind. He had taken on a duty and it was of his own choice, so he would work harder than anyone to make sure they made it out of every situation alive.

It was terrifying. But thinking back on it now, he would have made the same choice again, if given the chance.

For over a decade, no one could see an end. Not until a young Ingrian Captain was honored with the highest rank the military possessed, and used all his influence to convince his country to stop stalling the end of the war.

There was not one person in East Eurasia who didn’t know who Victor Nikiforov was. Some thought of him with disdain, those few royalists who still had the guts to be open about their  support of the Emperor. Others, however, thought of him as a liberator.

About a year before Yuuri was allowed to join the rebel troops, Hiroko had met him for the first time. General Nikiforov, who valued life more than making money out of war and devastation. She’d visited Ingria as an ambassador of the rebellion, and she had been surprised and charmed by the young man who commanded the attention of everyone, in a room filled with old men dressed in medals they probably didn’t deserve. And for the first time in years, Hiroko had hope that things would start to change.

A few years later, the peace treaty was signed, and a different kind of hell began.

Yuuri had seen Victor once during the war, but it was too rushed, the situation too urgent for them to meet properly. He’d heard about Victor from the grapevine, of course, and his team had been called many times to prepare the ground for Nikiforov’s army to take over. It was during one of those missions that things had gone horribly wrong, and Yuuri and his team would have perished if Victor hadn’t intervened and sent them away. Had it not been for the rank on his uniform, Yuuri would have thought he was one of the common soldiers. There had also been a second time, when the Emperor’s army had managed to take the General hostage and Yuuri’s team led the Ingrian rescue squad to save him.

So General Nikiforov had become someone that Yuuri admired from afar, listening to the stories of self-sacrifice and genius strategies, of putting himself in harm’s way and making sure his soldiers and civilians were as safe as possible at all times. Yuuri was a fresh face in the rebel teams back then, and he decided that he aspired to be like that man on the battlefield.

Until the war ended and the Ingrians took over East Eurasia, building a new empire of oppression where the previous had fallen. Then, Yuuri had thought he didn’t owe admiration or respect to any Ingrian.   

That first mission to the Ingrian lab had changed everything, and Yuuri sometimes laughed at how determined he had been to not trust any Ingrians again. Especially when, not even a year later, he had become used to sleeping in the same bed as one of them.

* * *

 

The first ads of the new player hit the media like a storm. The council took complete advantage of Yuuri’s name to create his ‘character’; a soldier with blue blood, who was fierce and strong, dressed in the mandatory black-ops uniform with his hair slicked back, pitted against the hero of Ingria.

**“Royal Game Changer: A Rival Worthy of the Legend”**

While the council had decided that the character of Victor Nikiforov should be patterned after the real story of the war hero, the persona of Yuuri Katsuki was created to represent the imperial family that had ruled over East Eurasia for decades, and run whole countries to ruin.

**“Yuuri Katsuki: The Real Story Behind the Name”**

They made him the Prince of the East, the Heir fighting to earn his father’s favour and protect his crown, the ruthless soldier that trained specifically to be able to match the General who had invaded his lands and tried to overthrow the Katsuki dynasty. The new persona was, in short, everything that Yuuri wasn’t.

**“The General VS The Tyrant Prince - Best Out of 5 Wins”**

Their goal was to cultivate a sense of rivalry between the two characters. To make a persona worthy of the Nikiforov’s might, someone who could challenge him and possibly remove him from his throne.

**“Beyond the Big 50: Is the General Ready for the Newcomer?”**

They would change the “algorithm”. No “real” deaths for the first four games. The viewers would think the characters die, but they would be brought back for the next stage. But the ‘Finale’ would be a bloody hell, all or nothing, two teams of twenty each, two leaders out for each other’s necks.

**“Slayer: Special, No Deaths Game of Five Rounds with DEADLY Finale”**

And, while the heads planned everything, with Giacometti manipulating them, while Phichit monitored the chips inside the heads of his two friends from afar, and while Mari coordinated the final stage of their plan—Yuuri and Victor waited.

**“Katsuki: The Prince to Debut in Two Weeks in his First All or Nothing Game”**

 

_How do I live, how do i breathe, when you’re not here I’m suffocating_

The Writing's on The Wall - Sam Smith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading! Chapter 3 is already in the works and I hope to have it posted as soon as possible. Lot's of victuuri in the next one!


	3. That was the beginning of the two of us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so very excited about this chapter, you have no idea! It's full of Victuuri goodness (and some pain, be warned) and I loved how the structure of the povs ended up kind of overlapping, if that makes sense. 
> 
> Big thank you to @Piyo13 for the beta skills and support <3

_Say my name and every color reilluminates_

_Spectrum - Florence and the Machine_

 

The next time Yuuri woke up, it  was to the sound of a voice in his head commanding him. The action of opening his eyes felt natural, but what followed disoriented him. He wasn’t alone in the room anymore; there were two men and one woman in white robes, holding notepads and taking notes. They looked at him, noting his every move and his every reaction. Yuuri tried to be as still as possible, barely breathing.

“Proceed,” the woman said.

Almost immediately, Yuuri heard another voice in his head.

_Rise._

His reaction was instant. Yuuri felt his torso and arms move on their own, and in two seconds he was sitting on the bed, wincing slightly at the pain on the back of his head.

“Good, fast reaction. Step two.”

It went like that for a while, and Yuuri tried really hard not to freak out. His body wasn’t his own, and it felt like he couldn’t do anything if he wasn’t given an order. He focused on controlling his breathing and his expressions.

“His heart rate is slightly elevated, but that’s to be expected.”

He thought he had been prepared for this. He’d spoken with many of the prisoners they’d freed over the years, he’d heard about the complete lack of autonomy when under orders. Some cases, those prisoners who had been under mind control for a long time, even mentioned lack of control over their own emotions. Phichit had explained all the ‘neuroscience bullshit’ behind the mind control and how the chips worked.

But still, nothing could have prepared him for the feeling of having your whole being on strings.

They had him move around for a while, testing the reaction of his limbs, then do some basic exercises for hand-eye coordination. They took off his IV and had him stand and do some more exercises. Another woman entered the room, and they had him lie on the bed again.

_Stand down._

“Everything looks fine,” she said after doing a quick check up. “Have you tested communication orders yet?”

Communication?

“We were about to do just that, ma’am,” one of the nurses answered.

Yuuri remembered what Phichit had said about communication orders not being as fast, and that there was a possibility that the cure affected these orders first. _Just count to two before you answer._

“Proceed.”

_State your name._

_One, two._ When his mouth didn’t move of its own accord, Yuuri responded.

“Yuuri Katsuki,” he answered after a second, trying to sound hesitant.

_State your country of origin._

_One, two…_

“Nipon.”

Yuuri could feel his heart trying to beat out of his chest, and the machine connected to his pulse points reacted. He knew they would push for more details; he had to stay calm and respond with only what he should tell them.

“He’s getting anxious. He probably has more information he didn’t give Giacometti. Continue.” Yuuri already hated her.

_State your connection to Emperor Katsuki._

“I am his nephew.”

_State your role in the war._

“I was captain of a rebel squad in North Kina.”

_State your reason for breaking into the facility._

“I wanted to free him.”

_Answer this question: how did you break in?_

“I entered through the underground sewage system.”

_Answer this question: what was your escape plan?_

“I didn’t have one.”

There was silence for a moment and the people around Yuuri looked at each other in surprise. They had expected a more detailed answer, and not giving them one was a bit risky, but Yuuri had to play the part of a completely desperate man. The voice in his head waited for orders.

“Proceed.”

_Explain your connection to Victor Nikiforov._

Yuuri had been expecting this question after the answer he gave Chris about wanting to free Victor, and gave them his practiced speech.

* * *

 

It was about a month after the incident at the lab where Yuuri had been shot that Victor Nikiforov reached out to the only remaining base of the rebellion in Nipon for a deal and reinforcements. 

The rebellion had lost a lot after the peace treaty, mostly because they had thought they weren’t needed anymore and most people had wanted to return home. The Ingrian government had allowed them a few weeks of peace, mostly because they wanted to give them a false sense of security, while the newly freed countries tried to put themselves back together. And, when everyone thought things would finally work out and had their defenses down, the Ingrians took over everything.

Mari Katsuki had realised what was about to happen after coming across confidential information with plans of putting Ingrian and Helvetian people in power to rule over the “fallen” countries of East Eurasia. Unfortunately, there had been nothing they could have done about it, other than warn what was left of the rebellion and go into hiding, especially when reports of prisoners being taken to Ingrian facilities reached her hands. Not even her family’s remaining fortune could do anything anymore. Not alone at least.

Their first mission to a lab was a success, but only because it was one of the smallest ones. The second would have been a disaster if not for the timely intervention of another team, that was the only reason her brother didn’t die.

Mari tried her best not to feel guilty over that. Maybe if she had managed to get more information about the facility and its security, they would have been more prepared. But she couldn’t focus on such trivial things. Not since the situation had only gotten worse, with abductions in Kina increasing every day and most of the abducted being former members of the rebellion.

They were basically at their rope’s end when Mari received the first messaged signed by former Ingrian General Victor Nikiforov. She checked and double-checked the source to be sure; there was no doubt it really was a message from Nikiforov.

She had kind of expected it, actually. Her information division was the one Nikiforov used to work with the most during the war, and after the incident at the lab with her own team, she’d been preparing for a message from him. Seung Gil had told her everything about the mission, how they wouldn’t have made it out without the Ingrian team, and how her own brother would have died without Nikiforov himself going back to make sure no one was left behind.

That was how their communication with Victor’s team began, while Yuuri was recuperating from the gunshot wound. Seung Gil’s team left almost immediately for the abandoned army base Victor’s team had taken over, knowing that, alone and without Nikiforov’s help, they wouldn’t do anything. Mari was the one to tell Yuuri about Seung Gil’s decision, and she didn’t miss her brother’s blush at the mention of the Ingrian General or the stolen glances to the brown leather jacket lying on the back of a chair in the corner of the room.

“I’ll join them once the doctor clears me,” Yuuri said.

“I thought you might say that,” Mari said with a smile. “Talk with Phichit, too. Nikiforov said they will try to find a way to reverse that mind control thing, and they’ll need all the help they can get,” Mari told her brother before leaving.  

Two weeks later, with his arm still in a sling and the leather jacket over his shoulders, Yuuri left home one more time with the last remaining rebels of East Eurasia.

* * *

 

It took a while for Victor’s team to transform the old army base in South Ingria from an abandoned slum into a habitable place for almost a hundred soldiers and fifteen scientists, but it was hard work that no one minded. They were all there for a reason, and no one was slacking off. They’d already cleaned the whole place, removing all the useless equipment and replacing it with everything they’d managed to smuggle with them when Victor’s communication with Mari Katsuki had finally paid off. Seung Gil’s team had already arrived and been put to work after settling down at the base when Mari sent the files of the next team he should expect, mostly scientists, this time, and a few veteran soldiers.

And among them, Yuuri Katsuki.

Victor would be lying if he said he wasn’t excited to see him again.

They were expecting the team today, and he’d planned to be free to greet them himself, but managed to get caught up in carrying desks around from one office to the other and he ended up finding out through the radio that they had already arrived. He almost fell down the stairs, barely stopping himself from falling on Georgi in his rush to get to the main entrance, with Makkachin running behind him. He tried to seem nonchalant, but he was sure he hadn’t fooled anyone, going by the weird looks he got. Mila caught up to him as he was making sure his hair and clothes weren’t out of place.

“Vitya, you don’t have to let them know how much of a dork you are on the first day,” she teased him, before walking ahead to greet the people stepping out of the first car.

It didn’t take Victor long to locate him. He was standing there, turned away from Victor, arguing with another dark-haired young man and donning a very familiar leather jacket. It made Victor’s heart flutter.

“Phichit, I can carry my own stuff, I’m not that crippled yet,” Yuuri argued.

“Who’s your doctor, Yuuri? Who’s the one who had to stitch you up the last time you pulled those stitches because you decided stress cleaning was the way to go for your nerves? And  who’s gonna hear it from your sister if anything happens to you under my watch? That’s right. Me,” the other man ranted and grabbed a heavy-looking backpack from Yuuri’s arms. More people were gathered around them, shaking their heads. Phichit made a funny image, carrying five different bags while grabbing another one from Yuuri, and Victor thought he should go join his mission to not allow Yuuri to strain himself.

Makkachin reached the two men before Victor, the big pup excited to meet new people, and almost made Phichit, who was still holding all those bags, fall on his ass.

“Makkachin, please remember your manners!” Victor said, rushing to their side to calm down the overgrown puppy.

“I apologize for this, she’s still young and has a lot of energy,” Victor explained, while keeping a hand on Makkachin’s collar to keep her in check.

“As long as I’m not on my ass, I don’t mind,” Phichit said, shrugging off his apology.

Victor’s eyes landed on Yuuri, and he was delighted to see that the man was looking at the dog with what could only be described as heart eyes, and his face was filled with even more adoration when Makkachin rubbed her nose against Yuuri’s hand to be petted.

Victor looked away before he melted right in front of everyone, and decided  to finally take pity on Phichit before the poor man was buried under the weight of all those bags.

“I have orders from his sister as well, so let me help you,” Victor said, with a wink towards Yuuri’s direction that he hoped didn’t look too tacky. He was very satisfied to see Yuuri looking down with a rising blush on his cheeks. “Which bags are Yuuri’s?” He gestured at Phichit’s baggage.

“Thank goodness. I was very determined to carry these on my own, but I don’t know how far I’d make it,” Phichit exclaimed, dropping all the bags down as gently as possible. “I’m guessing you’re General Nikiforov?” he asked, stretching his arm for a handshake.

“Yes, that’s me. Call me Victor, please. You must be Phichit Chulanont, the neuroscientist.”

“I didn’t know I was so famous that General Nikiforov would know my name,” Phichit said in jest.

“Mari sent all of your files about a week ago, and I went through them to see where we should place you. The scientific department is very excited for your arrival, Mr. Chulanont,” Victor explained, and it was true. They would need all the medical, scientific help they could get if they really wanted to succeed.

“See, Yuuri, for once I am more needed than you,” Phichit joked and elbowed Yuuri at the ribs.

“For someone so hell-bent on my health, you sure like to abuse me a lot,” Yuuri complained, rubbing the spot his friend had hit.

“Oh, cheer up, you’re the only one who’s out of carrying and organising duty. My flimsy elbow won’t hurt you,” Phichit shot back, laughing.

“Mila, Otabek, and Nikolai will show you where to put everything. Mila is in charge of vehicles, Otabek of weapons, and Nikolai of medical or scientific equipment. They also have a list with your names and assigned beds. I left today free for you other than a short briefing and a tour of the base, if you wish, but I thought you’d prefer to rest after your trip,” Victor informed them.  

“Cool, you can take Yuuri to a doctor for a quick check-up and then straight to his room with his stuff and force him to take his medication,” Phichit said, handing him three of the six bags at his feet.

“I may not be allowed to do any heavy lifting, but I’m not a complete invalid, and I’d still like to be present for the important stuff, if you don’t mind,” Yuuri said with narrowed eyes, but Victor couldn’t identify any real malice in his tone.

Victor stood there, watching Yuuri and Phichit as the two men were caught in a staring contest for a few seconds, before Phichit conceded defeat and turned around towards where people had already started unloading the vans.

“Fine. Who’s Nikolai, and whose butt do I have to make Yuuri kick if they damage my stuff?”

Victor turned to look at Yuuri, who was still staring after Phichit with wide eyes and blushing cheeks. He took that moment to catalogue all the differences, like how Yuuri’s hair was no longer slicked back, but instead falling soft over his forehead; the glasses, the missing intensity from his expression. He looked younger and relaxed, if a bit flustered.

“Hi, Yuuri.” Victor addressed the man himself for the first time with a smile.

Yuuri’s head turned back to him, but it took him a couple of seconds to answer.

“Hi,” he muttered eventually before pointing to where Phichit had run off to. “I better go check over there too, you know, make sure everything goes right. Yeah, uh, I’ll just…”

Victor didn’t have the time to answer or protest Yuuri’s mumbling before he basically ran away from him.

For the next few hours, Victor helped carry weapons and ammunition to the armory and equipment he didn’t recognize to the one lab they had restored under Nikolai Plisetsky’s and Phichit’s instructions, while trying to keep an eye on Yuuri, who at least didn’t try to do anything that would strain him too much. Victor caught Yuuri staring at him more than once, but every time he did, the other man would turn away, pretending to be busy with something else. He wasn’t sure what to think of the man he had been so excited to meet again.

Of course, their first meeting had been under less than desirable circumstances, and it shouldn’t be considered a true indicator of Yuuri’s character. Watching him now, Victor caught so many sides of the person who had given him hope during their first mission. While Yuuri seemed anxious and a little self-conscious around him, he was also good at guiding and directing people, not really ordering them around like Victor was so used to seeing in the army; just giving directions and efficient advice. He knew everyone and addressed them with respect and patience.

And even if, as far as Victor knew, Yuuri was just a soldier (an incredibly skilled soldier, but still just a soldier), he could recognize every bit of equipment Mari had managed to send with them, and he had enough knowledge about everything to know how it should be carried around or stored away. He had taken the time to study and learn about each and every item.

Victor was more than impressed.

It took them a few hours to get everything in order and the cars parked away alongside the other vehicles already in the underground lot. Every newcomer that had just arrived had been instructed to go to the barracks waiting for them and stash away their personal belongings.

And then there were meetings upon meetings, and briefings and information about how things worked, and how renovations of the base would slow them down for a while but they would work much faster now that they had more hands, and how they had taken every prisoner from the first lab back to their homes and how the one time they had encountered prisoners with working chips they’d  had to restrain them and take them far enough from the lab for the connection to stop working, and how the science department had already started working on the chips and finding a way to reverse it without distance being a factor because once someone was chipped they could be used and ordered around for the rest of their lives and they didn’t want just a temporary solution.

Victor cherished the commitment he saw in everyone’s eyes during the meetings. They were long and time-consuming and everyone was tired from both the trip and carrying around heavy machinery for hours, but no one complained. They were all here for a reason, and they were all prepared for the sacrifices that mission required.

It took hours before they were done and everyone started to leave their makeshift conference room. Victor saw Yuuri leave the room followed by Phichit, who had an arm around the other man’s shoulders and was talking about a check-up before bed. He couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that he hadn’t had the chance to speak with Yuuri more all day, but he realised the circumstances weren’t ideal, anyway. As Victor was left alone in the room he started to gather all the papers and documents, and he was about to stand and go back to his office when someone cleared their throat from the door. Yuuri had come back and he was standing there, hesitant to enter the room.

“General, I apologize for bothering you,” he said.

“Yuuri, please, come in, don’t just stand there,” Victor raised his voice in his excitement and rushed to drag Yuuri inside the room. “And just Victor is fine, no need for formalities. Besides, that title hardly seems appropriate anymore.”

“Well, out of all the people who have been given the title, you’re the one who truly deserves it,” Yuuri argued.

Victor stared at Yuuri, his heart stopping at the unexpected praise. He watched Yuuri’s eyes  widen, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just said, either. He turned away in an attempt to hide his blush, and smiled.

“In any case, there’s really no need for formalities between us, right?”

Yuuri looked back at him again, and whatever he saw in Victor’s gaze must have put him slightly at ease. His shoulders seemed to relax and even though the blush didn’t go away ( _and what a lovely shade it was_ , Victor thought), a small smile graced his face.

“If you think so,” Yuuri answered.

“I do.”

Victor didn’t know how long they stood there, staring at each other, waiting for someone to speak. What was it about this man that bewitched him like this? It wasn’t just that he was beautiful. Yuuri had a strength hidden behind the unassuming appearance, beautiful features, and quiet voice. And he didn’t have to know that the man was a soldier and a master of five different martial arts to know it. That strength was in his words and his mannerisms, in all the little things Victor had discovered in the few hours he’d spent in Yuuri’s presence, and he couldn’t help feeling drawn to him.

Maybe it was one of all these things that made Victor want to know more. Or maybe it was just the fact that Yuuri was the first proof he had ever had that even if war could change a person, it didn’t have to taint them.

That thought took Victor back to things he didn’t want to remember.

“Did you need me for something?” he asked, trying to sound as casual as possible.

“Um, not really. I just wanted to thank you.”

“For what?”

“For saving me back then. You could have left without me, but you didn’t.”

Victor remembered how his body had moved on its own, how he had run as fast as he could to reach the man who had put himself between a young boy and a bullet, and how determined he was to not let that bravery go to waste.

And seeing Yuuri in front of him now, after meeting him under more normal circumstances and having the chance to really get to know him, Victor was thankful that he had stayed back, too.

Victor reached out a brushed away a lock of Yuuri’s hair that had fallen in his eyes.

“I couldn’t have done otherwise.”

* * *

 

Yuuri’s mind wandered back to that first day at the abandoned base that would become the place where his heart would find a new home, and the person who was the reason for that.  

Even though he’d thought about him a lot after their first meeting at the lab, he hadn’t been prepared to have Victor’s undivided attention on him the moment they arrived. Yuuri hadn’t resisted his warmth in the back of that van, when all he’d been able to do was draw strength from Victor to bear the pain. He thought he would be fine meeting him again, but it seemed like his social anxiety had other plans.

He didn’t know what to say when Victor appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, with an overexcited dog following him, prepared to help with anything and be hands-on in sorting out all the equipment, when he could have probably begged out of it due to his position. Yuuri wanted to to talk to him, but didn’t know what to say, and his words and excuses to get away sounded pathetic in his ears.

What did people even say in this situation? _Hey, remember when I almost died in your arms, that was cool._

It didn’t help that Victor was disarmingly beautiful up close. All the pictures and Yuuri’s memories didn’t do him justice. It wasn’t fair that their second meeting would be at this moment, with Yuuri a mess from days on the road.

Yuuri tried to focus on helping the unloading of the cars as much as possible, while keeping his eyes from wandering back to Victor. He wasn’t very successful at the latter.

By the end of the day, he knew that his past admiration for the man many people had idolized for different reasons wasn’t unfounded. If anything, Yuuri had a feeling that it would only grow with time.

And grow it did. Those feelings evolved into something much more than hero worship or admiration.

It was those feelings that they wanted to use to their advantage.

Because if they knew anything about the bastards at the head of the Gamer organization, it was that they were sadistic drama lovers who fed on people’s pain. And if they knew the truth about Yuuri’s relationship with Victor, they would try to drag this situation out as long as they could.

They would give Yuuri and Victor the time they needed for the cure to work.

_“Proceed.”_

_Explain your connection to Victor Nikiforov._

“I love him,” Yuuri answered with conviction, like that was the only truth that really mattered in his world.

And that was enough.

* * *

 

For days, Victor tried to focus on Chris’ reassurance that they had the situation under control, but the thought that Yuuri was near, and the fact that he had no idea what was going on, set him on edge. Chris had told him to try and stay calm to not interfere with the cure, but he couldn’t help it, and took his stress out on his daily training. It didn’t help that he didn’t notice any difference to his reactions to orders.They ordered him to eat and he did, they ordered him to train and he did, they ordered him to wash and he did. 

That didn’t help with his stress either. 

Even his dreams haunted him.

He was lifting weights in the training area, one barbell in each hand, turned towards a mirror and focused only on his own movements, trying to force himself feel something other than anxiety, making his muscles scream from the strain. He didn’t hear the sound of the doors opening and closing.

But then he saw the reflection in the mirror of the people walking behind him. Three guards. And Yuuri in the middle, wearing the standard uniform of the ‘labrats’, walking in perfect synch with the guards and looking straight ahead.

Victor’s breath caught in his throat, his heart stopped.

Still, he kept lifting the barbells to his chin and then back down, one at a time.

_It’s fine, everything's fine. Yuuri had the cure. He had it before he came here. He will be fine._

Victor kept watching him, but Yuuri wouldn’t look back.

And what a tragedy that was, because there had been a time when they could say everything words couldn’t express just through their eyes.

* * *

 

 

There had been a team scouting around a few miles from the headquarters and heading towards them. They would be inevitably found out. When the alarm broke the silence of the late night at the base, they assembled quickly and headed out, taking the opportunity to manage a strike to their enemy as well as prevent their hideout being discovered. 

Victor and Yuuri lead their own teams, two of the four that surrounded the enemies. They took out the scouts first, as silently as possible. And then they went for the main course.

All of them were used to fighting of every kind. Open war or surprise assault, they’d been through all of it. Yuuri was used to putting himself in danger, placing his own body on the line of fire to save someone. He didn’t even think about it anymore, his body just reacted. But he was usually smarter, making sure that it would never come down to that.

He was also used to seeing his friends and teammates bleed around him and scream in pain, some of them even dying on the spot, like they hadn’t been talking casually about their homes or their plans for after the war just a few hours before.

The war had the gift of making death seem so fleeting.

What Yuuri wasn’t used to was this new feeling of urgency that coursed through him at the sight of Victor fighting by his side. It wasn’t something he hadn’t witnessed before, but it was usually through camera footage. And while he’d admired Victor’s fighting many times, on the battlefield he couldn’t concentrate on the fluid and practiced moves, or the quick and smart decisions, or his voice rising above the hustle of the battle to call out orders.

Yuuri was truly afraid, for the first time in his life, because all he could concentrate on was the bullets flying past, barely inches away from Victor’s skin. All he could see was the enemies charging at the man he loved, and the fear paralysed him.

They’d only kissed for the first time hours ago. A sigh of relief and a resounding “finally”, as Yuuri closed the distance between them to accept what had been in front of him all along. They had kissed for the first time, and now Yuuri could lose him like nothing had ever existed between them, like what they felt meant nothing to the universe after all, though it seemed like the most important thing in the world.

He’d never before made such a dire mistake during a battle. To let your guard down meant to die. Die, or let one of your own die. Yuuri had never allowed himself to make that mistake, and he would beat himself up for a very long time for making it during that battle.

Because even if Yuuri had frozen only for just a second, it had been enough. He didn’t see the enemy charging at him from behind, knife in hand. He only saw the terror in Victor’s icy blue eyes. He only heard him shout Yuuri’s name and run with everything he had.

Victor ended up taking the blade that was meant for Yuuri. And Yuuri got to see the nightmare come to life right in front of him, as Victor barely concealed the scream of pain as the knife pierced his shoulder, falling to his knees in front of Yuuri.

Yuuri took out the man who had stabbed Victor, and Victor didn’t stay down for longer than a few seconds. The whole scene had lasted maybe a minute, but it felt like an eternity. They pushed forward after that, sparing only a glance of reassurance for each other before throwing themselves back in the heat of the battle.  

When the whole thing was over, Yuuri watched Victor collapse twenty feet away from him, and ran. A medic was already at Victor’s side and soon declared him fine, apart from weakness due to blood loss.

Yuuri’s mind was running a thousand miles per hour. Was it the guilt, the fear, the adrenaline of the battle, the numbness of being paralyzed and unable to use his own limbs to be useful, to save someone he cared about, to not be a liability? Probably just a combination of it all, and he couldn’t deal with everything while watching the blooddrenched sleeve of Victor’s shirt that was swiftly cut to allow the medic to work on the wound.

Yuuri walked away, but didn’t go far. The sky was painted a light pink as the sun began to rise, and the rest of the team was going through the usual after-battle process. They would need to work fast and get back to the base as soon as possible. Yuuri was needed, but everything had built up inside him so much that he couldn’t contain it anymore. He walked a little further away and sat down, shaking, with tears that he didn’t bother wiping away, ridding himself of his kevlar vest and weapons as if they were the cause of all his turmoil. Yuuri would usually wait until everything was under control to break down, but he couldn’t do that now. He drew his knees close to his chest, hiding his face from the few rays of the rising sun, and let the full power of his emotions course through him.

Yuuri didn’t hear him at first, when Victor called his name; he just buried his face deeper under his arms. He only reacted when he felt a hand on his shoulder, startled by the contact.

“Are you alright?”

Yuuri raised his head to look at Victor, who had kneeled down beside him. The sun lit up his face, reflecting from his silver hair and blue eyes like it was created for that sole purpose. Victor was a bit paler than usual, but other than a wide bandage around his shoulder, he seemed fine.

“Are _you_ asking _me_ if I’m alright?”

“Well, the medics are done with me and they said I’m fine, so...”

“You stupid, stupid, careless idiot,” Yuuri exclaimed and stood up, shaking away Victor’s hand and started passing in front of him to avoid looking at him.

“Yuuri…”

“Putting yourself in danger like that when there’s so much at stake.”

Yuuri realised he wasn’t being fair at all and he was projecting his own failure onto Victor, but that didn’t mean he didn’t believe what he was saying to be true as well.

“Yuuri,” Victor tried to interrupt again.

“You can’t just throw yourself at a knife for anyone when this team _you_ built can’t go on without you!”

“Yeah, well, maybe I found something _I_ can’t go on without,” Victor said back, obviously keeping his own frustration at bay. Yuuri stopped pacing, caught off guard by Victor’s words and impatience, even through the careful restraint on his emotions. He stood frozen, eyes to the ground and hands gripping his hair in an attempt to not throw himself in Victor’s arms, because he knew exactly what Victor meant.

“I’ve spent my whole life fighting for everyone else, and I don’t regret it. But after a while, you start to lose yourself to every cause, when you never keep something just for you, when you are willing to sacrifice anything and everything, even your own sanity, sometimes. Don’t tell me you don’t know what that feels like, Katsuki Yuuri, ‘cause I know you would be lying.

“And maybe I’m being selfish for once, for refusing to give up something that means so much to me,” Victor continued, as he finally walked to put himself right in front of Yuuri. “But I’m tired of feeling like I don’t have anything more than fighting and blood to look forward to.”

Yuuri’s head couldn’t bear the weight anymore, and his forehead fell against Victor’s collarbone.

“Still, you can’t let yourself get killed. You’re too valuable to this team. If you died…”

“They would know exactly what to do,” Victor interrupted him, placing a hand at the back of Yuuri’s head to keep him against his chest, stroking his fingers lightly through Yuuri’s hair. Yuuri relished in the contact. “Why do you think I’ve insisted on so many people being involved in the meetings and dealings and the whole process and activity of the organisation? Why do you think I called Chris back while risking our main source of information? I needed you to meet him to know who to trust in case anything happened.”

“And what about me? How do you think I’d feel if something happened to you?” Yuuri said, finally voicing his true fear.

Victor’s fingers stopped and Yuuri felt the movements of the other man’s chest, the erratic breathing that could have been a product of the injury, or of Yuuri’s admission that he was just as selfish as Victor was.

“Please, Yuuri, look at me,” Victor coaxed him to raise his head, but didn’t push him back.

They looked into each other’s eyes, and Yuuri felt like this moment should last forever, even with the pain and the smell of death around them, because in that moment, with the purple sky above and the sun peeking shyly over the mountains as though afraid to disturb them, Yuuri understood.

“You see it, too, don’t you?” Victor’s voice pleaded to be heard as his hand traced the tear tracks on Yuuri’s face.

Yuuri understood that this thing between them wasn’t just something that would pass. It wasn’t something that could be switched off because the world demanded it, or was too complicated for simple things like love and devotion. He’d known the strength of his own feelings for a while, and had accepted them. But he could only see the measure of Victor’s love now that he let himself see it, as they were both bloodstained and tired, under the gentle gaze of the sunrise.

And he silently accepted it all, even if it meant more fear and pain in the future. He accepted that sometimes he would be selfish, that he would put something else above the good of the world. He accepted that he mattered enough to someone that they would choose to stand in front of a firing squad for him and that, given the chance, he would do the same. 

There was no coming back for either of them.

And maybe that was fine.

Yuuri apologized with his fingers brushing back Victor’s hair. And Victor reassured him with a gentle smile that held so much belief and devotion that Yuuri wanted to cry all over again.

Victor moved first this time, leaning in like it was the most natural thing in the world to close the distance and place a kiss on his mouth, and Yuuri kissed back with everything he had. Nothing interrupted this kiss, as they let themselves celebrate the fact that they had made it through another hell alive.  

* * *

 

 _Proceed to shooting range number three._

_This isn’t normal,_ Victor thought as he carefully put down the barbells and turned away from the mirror. They hadn’t ordered him to do something specific while training for months. They let the prisoners who’d been there longer mostly free during practice, since everyone had their own style and a simple order to _proceed_ was usually enough. He had an idea about what was going on as he walked up to the shooting range, taking the weapon and soundproof earplugs that were given to him.

Next to him, in front of the shooting range number four, stood Yuuri, holding the exact same weapon.

They wanted to compare their abilities.

Victor tried to imagine they were back at their base, that their friends were standing behind them, betting on who would win and cheering them on. The memories of such nights didn’t make things any easier, as they were given weapon after weapon to try out.

They were equals on the shooting range.

What they couldn’t deduct from this was that Victor had a different kind of instinct with guns of any type while on the battlefield.

_Proceed to the training mat._

This was exactly what Victor had dreaded from the moment he realised what was going on.

He walked to one side of the mat, and faced Yuuri for the first time. He wasn’t sure if he was happy or sad to have those eyes look back at him. He almost couldn’t take the weight of Yuuri's eyes. He’d missed him so much, even if he didn’t want him here at all. But if they were risking everything, at least he was thankful for the chance to see him one last time.

Once again, it was almost like old times. Like the first time they had faced each other during their own training, after Victor watched Yuuri take down his soldiers one at a time and insisted that he try to fight him, too. Like all the other times that they made unofficial dates out of their training because there was no more time for anything else.

He hated the organization even more for this, for tainting his memories with this loss of control, for making them part of their game. For pitting against him the one person who he didn’t have it in him to fight.

Yuuri attacked first, and Victor dodged punch after punch. Yuuri’s punches didn’t have their usual drive and strength. He was making a show of fighting, but also in a way that pushed Victor, as if trying to force him to join their charade.

_Attack._

And Victor couldn’t do otherwise.

He pushed back and Yuuri deflected expertly, already used to Victor’s tactics and movements.

_Cease._

He stopped mid-punch, and barely managed to react on his own when Yuuri started to attack again, and he realised what was going on. They weren’t just interested in seeing how they would do in a fight against each other. They counted and compared their reaction times against each other and their compatibility.

The first round ended with Victor on his back before they had the time to order him to attack again. For a moment, Victor couldn’t think. Yuuri was on top of him, thighs on either side of his hips, hand on his chest and fist ready to attack.

It was a sight Victor had missed. But what was even more beautiful was the small, teasing smirk on Yuuri's face, trying not to spread on his whole face and show. And Victor couldn’t help answering that smile with one of his own

And then Yuuri spoke.

“There you are,” Yuuri whispered before he schooled his expression and backed off, standing up and taking the starting stance again. Victor followed him.

_Attack._

Victor was still a bit stunned as he surged forward. He had spoken. Yuuri had a chip but he could talk while under orders. They could only speak after being completely released, but Yuuri had just done it in front of everyone.

It took then a few more rounds of back and forth before Victor was on the mat again, this time face down with Yuuri on his back

“Are you going easy on me, Vitya? Come on, we need to make this look good,” Yuuri said this time, his tone playful, lighting a spark of life inside Victor.

Yuuri was soon gone again, and Victor stood up before the order came.

Next round, Victor was the one to push Yuuri down. He tried to place his own face closer to Yuuri’s, making it easier for the other man to speak without being noticed. He craved those words. Maybe they unsettled him a bit too much, considering what Chris said about staying calm so as to not disturb the cure’s effectiveness anymore than necessary, but he understood why Yuuri was taking this risk. For those few seconds they had, Victor cherished every breath that brushed his hair, every small, meaningless sound and every touch, even if it was a careful punch to the gut. Because soon they would be torn apart again, and for once, maybe, he could hope that they would survive this.

“I know you’ve been through a lot. But you’ve made it this far. I know you’re strong enough. Please fight a little while longer. For me.”

Yuuri’s voice was a gentle plea, one that broke his heart and mended it again, because if there was ever only one reason for Victor to do anything, it was that Yuuri had asked for it.

Victor lost count of how many times they fought each other, but by the time they were ordered to stop and assume their starting positions for one last round, they were equals once more. They both tried to make it look good, like they weren’t enjoying this sparring in a way the people in the room would never understand. Victor’s skin was still buzzing from the contact with Yuuri, from hearing his voice close and tender and loving as always, like a distant dream that had proven to be true. And even though they were both panting from the exertion, they didn’t take their eyes off each other.

Yuuri’s said, _“feeling better now?”_ and Victor’s answered, _“thank you”._   

_Line up in front of the screens._

He wasn’t sure if it was by chance that Yuuri stood at attention next to him, or if Yuuri, who could apparently speak while under orders, had made the conscious decision to stand there. They were in the middle of thirty people, facing the big screens on the far end of the training room that were used to show “Game” announcements, and for the first time since he had been captured, Victor felt a little hopeful, and maybe a tiny urge to move his hand, to reach out against the order commanding his head and touch Yuuri again, just to prolong that hope for a little longer.

He felt stronger and braver now than when he’d woken up that morning, and he loathed even more what they’d done to him. Yuuri had seen how destroyed Victor’s soul had been and risked his own sanity to save him, or at least give him something to hold on to.

He owed it to Yuuri to at least try. Even if he could feel his brain already fighting not to give in under the weight of everything -- Yuuri being able to speak, and his own urge to defy the orders, both of which meant that the cure _could_ work.

Then the announcements started.

And Victor watched as the new advertisements for Yuuri’s fights played on the screens, showing him as a ferocious barbarian, a conqueror. And the ad of the new “show” of himself against Yuuri. 

And even though he wanted to stay strong, Victor’s mind caved. 

The pain started from the back of his head, travelling swiftly to the front, feeling like electricity against his temples and numbing his whole body. He trembled, wanting to scream and fall to the ground but his voice wouldn’t work. His eyes closed, and the last thing he remembered was the pain, and falling.

 

_That was the beginning of the two of us_

_The start of our show_

_The feel again (Stay) - Blue October_


	4. It’s time we saw a miracle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (In which Yuuri is hardcore af)
> 
> This chapter took me longer than usual to write. But I'm happy with it, even though almost none of it was planned :P
> 
> A huge thank you to Piyo13 for her support. I wouldn't be writing this story without her.
> 
> Warnings for violence. Remember the tags please!
> 
> Please leave a commend if you liked :)

_It’s time we saw a miracle_

_It’s time for something biblical_

_To pull us through_

_Apocalypse Please - Muse_

 

 

How he made it back to his cell, he didn’t know. For the first time, Yuuri was thankful for the chip controlling him; otherwise, he would have reacted and blown their plan the moment he realised something was wrong. He just barely managed to keep his composure, staying silent when Victor fell to the ground and the guards rushed to his side. He couldn’t even turn his head to see what was going on, and felt the beginnings of his own panic attack lick at his brain, forcing small jabs of electricity against his temples. He tried to concentrate on his breathing, because it would be even more suspicious if the same thing that had happened to Victor, happened to him as well.

He was lead back to his cell by order, a different room than the one they’d held him in the first few days. This one, he shared with two other prisoners, Mickey and Emil. Yuuri recognized them both from the most recent Games he’d watched before breaking into the lab. One of them, Mickey,  was among the people they’d saved recently, only to be recaptured during the attack at their base, the same one that ended with everything burning and Victor captured.

Yuuri entered the room and the moment the order released his brain, he collapsed on the nearest bed, ignoring everyone, head in his hands and trembling like grass in the wind.

“Are you going to be okay?” Yuuri heard from the other corner of the room.

Yuuri didn’t answer, not knowing what he should even say.

“They might mean for us to die, but seeing as they have special plans for you, they wouldn’t want you to die like this,” Mickey continued.

“Do you think that’s going to help him?” Emil interrupted.

“All I’m saying is we should call for the guards and a doctor or something. You saw what happened to Nikiforov, maybe it’s something that can affect us, too.”

“No!” Yuuri managed to say. The last thing they needed right now was for him to go under more medical examinations while the cure was taking effect.

Yuuri tried to remember his breathing, and every other exercise he knew to prevent his panic attacks. He pushed himself against the wall at the side of his bed, knees drawn up against his chest. He knew he wouldn’t be able to calm down completely until he knew what had happened to Victor, but he could at least maintain his composure for now.

“You know that I remember you, right?” he heard Mickey say again.

Yuuri nodded. “I remember you, too.”

“There’s just something I don’t understand,” Mickey pressed. Yuuri opened his eyes to look at him. Mickey stared back with a curious expression.

“You’re not just another soldier, desperately trying to save a loved one. You are the man who penetrated their labs again and again, trying to save the fucking  _ General  _ who helped you do that,” Mickey said.

“Obviously, it didn’t work. Or neither of us would be here right now,” Yuuri replied, bitterness filling his lie.

“Don’t play with me,” Mickey said through his teeth. “There was always a plan with the two of you. I remember what it was like with your team, you never made desperate moves like this.”

“Well, the man I love is being used by those monsters, and they make money out of torturing him. I think that calls for some desperation,” Yuuri hissed back.

His head hurt, the small outburst falling on top of everything else to put him under even more pressure, and he had to fight hard to concentrate.

“And now you’ll have to kill him, how’s that helping anyone?”

“Mickey, that’s enough.” Emil grabbed Mickey’s arm to stop him.

“If they have a plan to escape, wouldn’t you want to know?”

“If they have a plan, I doubt they would be able to say anything about it. Now sit down and leave him alone.” 

Mickey didn’t say anything after that. No one did. Yuuri was thankful for the silence.

Still, it killed him to not be able to offer them any help, or even some hope. He currently had so little of that himself that he feared he would drown without something to keep him on the surface.

“It was good, you know,” Emil said. “Seeing Nikiforov like that again. For a moment I thought we were back at the base.”

Yuuri teared up at that, because he’d felt something similar while fighting with Victor.

He realised immediately that Victor wasn’t putting everything he had into their spar; there was some part of himself he was holding back, as if he was afraid it would all come out like a flood.

So Yuuri had decided to take a risk. He’d had to, both for Victor and himself; he couldn’t take the emptiness on the face of the man he loved. He recognised it as a hopeless attempt to keep himself from breaking down in front of everyone. 

So Yuuri had smiled, to tell him:  _ I’m here and I love you and I won’t leave you alone again. Stay with me. _ And that timid smile on Victor’s face had told him everything he needed to know. 

His Victor was still there. 

All it took was a smile and a single piece of home, and his Victor was back. He was beaten down and broken and hopeless and not at all like the man who had taken it upon himself to take down the injustice done by his own people, but it was still him. Just a bit wounded, and with slightly longer hair. And Yuuri would take him in any way, even if that meant drowning in despair with him.

Yuuri had taken a risk by  _ waking _ Victor from his numbness, and he wasn’t sure if he regretted it now. He had to believe that Victor would pull through. Phichit had told him that not all lapses meant something bad—some were even necessary for the process of the cure. It was just bad timing that it had happened when it did. Yuuri woke Victor from his numbness and then they announced the new Games, and that had been the last straw.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Mickey asked, finally ignoring Emil’s efforts to shut him up.

“No,” Yuuri lied again.

“You and Nikiforov were all talk, giving us hope, only to let us end up back here,” Mickey spat out with venom in his voice.

“Mickey, stop it,” Emil interrupted again, but Yuuri couldn’t stay silent this time.

“He’s not wrong. At least about me. I couldn’t protect him when it mattered, and I let him get captured,” Yuuri said somberly, images of the night when everything went to dust assaulting his mind.

“Maybe you failed, but something tells me you did all you could.” Emil moved to sit next to Yuuri and put a hand on his shoulder. “And most important of all, you didn’t stop fighting. You survived this long for a reason.”

Phichit had told him something like that once, too.  _ You are someone who knows how to live for a cause, Yuuri. Even if that cause is to live for the people you love. _

And wasn’t that what he’d been doing all his life? Yuuri had fought wars for the greater good, but what had kept him alive was his sense of duty towards the people in his life. 

To stay alive to protect his family. To stay alive to prevent them from getting captured and tortured. To stay alive to deliver the cure to Victor, and free him from this hell.

That was what had kept him in line during the restless days and nights of waiting for the cure to be complete, when he didn’t know if Victor would live to see another day.

That was what had kept him from storming the lab earlier, without a plan that could work.

Mickey was right.

“I didn’t know Nikiforov for long, but I wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for him,” Emil continued. “He saved me more times than I can count during the Games. I thank my lucky stars every day that they’ve placed me only in his team so far.”

Yuuri was surprised to hear that. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just that, during the Games, he doesn’t only win. He looks out for his teammates, too.” Emil elaborated.

“Yeah, I noticed while watching tapes of his Games. I think it might be his favorite move,” Yuuri said, sarcastically, but still with a small smile on his face, remembering all the times Victor had done that same thing for him.

“I guess for him, winning means keeping his whole team alive,” Emil continued.

Yuuri mulled that over for a moment. “Don’t they give you the order to keep the team alive?

“No,” Mickey answered. “The whole game might be structured around teams, but they don’t really care about cannon fodder like that. They’re only concerned with keeping their main characters alive for more Games, to bring in viewers.”

“So, the orders are open to interpretation?” Yuuri mused.

“Maybe, or just to an extent?” Emil said. “But I’ve seen the General take blows that were meant for his teammates.There was this one time when I was stuck in a fist fight with another guy and my opponent was about to slice my throat, and Nikiforov threw himself between us.”

They didn’t speak again after that, and Yuuri felt a lot calmer than when he had come back to the cell, but he also filed away that new information. Maybe  _ interpretation  _ would be useful in his first Game.

* * *

Chris had tried with everything he had to remain calm while all hell broke loose. 

He watched as Yuuri and Victor were reintroduced to each other in the training area. He watched as tiny glimpses of his old friend broke through the heavy wall of despair around Victor’s heart, just by being close to Yuuri again and doing something that used to bring him joy. And he watched as Victor collapsed on the ground against the command in his head that told him to stay in line and watch the information dump on the screens.

He tried to channel his fear into restrained frustration as he ordered for medics to find out what was going on. He watched again as Yuuri walked away, tense and almost shaking against the order in his head. He stayed by Victor’s side all the way to the emergency room, thankful that his position allowed him that freedom. 

And he tried to remain calm until he could find the chance to make one very important—and very encrypted—phone call. The lab’s medics saying Victor would be fine wasn’t going to be enough for Chris. 

“He took a strong hit, but he survived,” Phichit told him the moment he answered his phone. “As far as I can tell, there’s no further damage to the chip apart from what the enzyme has done already.”

Phichit, who had made camp with Mari at a secret location Chris had pointed out near the lab, was able to keep track of everything happening inside the heads of Victor and Yuuri by hacking into the frequency used by the lab to transmit orders to the chips; he also gave frequent reports to Chris. Phichit was very diligent and barely slept, all to make sure he didn’t miss any change in their friends’ brains. He’d even tried to call Chris the moment he realised something was wrong, and sent messages when his calls didn’t go through.

If Chris was their guardian angel inside the lab, Phichit was the omnipotent being outside of it, watching over the smallest of details and keeping track of them both for the sake of his friends and for future reference. Because while Yuuri and Victor were doing their thing in the lab, the remaining members of Phichit’s team were duplicating the cure for the rest of the prisoners.

And when the time was right, they would free everyone.

“They are going to do more tests in a few hours,” Chris continued, still worried. “Are they going to detect anything?”

“Maybe. But they shouldn’t. I took a lot of measures to hide the enzyme in the natural habitat of their own science. They should assume any degradation of the chip is all because of the stress  _ they  _ put on it, by pushing Victor’s emotions like they did.”

“They could try to replace the chip though. That would take us back to square one, and we can’t lose more time,” Chris objected.

“All they can do is repair it, at this point,” Phichit interjected. “It’s been too long since they placed the implant, and replacing it could damage the brain, now. I doubt they will risk their favorite general like that. That’s why we didn’t try removing the chip from the people we freed, either.”

Chris sighed and ran a hand down his face, feeling some of the tension leave him. This whole situation might actually make him go bald, one of these days. Or cause a heart attack. 

“Okay. Anything else I should know before I hang up? I don’t know when I’ll be able to call again.”

“The enzyme in Victor’s brain is actually working quite fast right now,” Phichit said, impressed. “Maybe it’s because he’s unconscious, or the enzyme is taking advantage of the hormone spike to hide its activity, or something. Either way, very interesting.” Phichit ventured into more advanced ‘neuroscience bullshit’ after that. Chris couldn’t keep up and wished he’d face-called Phichit, if only so the other man could see his eyeroll.

“Phichit, darling, please use a language I can understand. I am multilingual for a reason.”

“Sorry. You know I get carried away sometimes. Basically, Victor’s chip deficiency could almost reach the same level as Yuuri’s soon, they way things look right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could ignore speech commands when he wakes up.”

_ Which means, I will need to find a way to test that, before anyone else gets their hands on Victor after he wakes up,  _ Chris thought to himself. “And anything about Yuuri?”

“His hormone levels have spiked, too, which is to be expected, but I think he’s managed to handle the stress well so far. You should check on him though, just to make sure. Mari’s orders.”

“Will do. Thanks, Chulanont. You’re the best.”

“Don’t I know it,” Phichit laughed. “Go watch over our idiots. I’ll keep you updated if anything changes.”

They disconnected the call, and Chris let his forehead rest against the wall in front of him. For a moment, he let the mask of the collected-yet-intense villain fall away, and the worries for his friends washed over him, more welcome than anyone would have thought. He welcomed these worries and fears, because they were real, and they were what kept him grounded and fighting. 

The moment passed. Chris sighed and put on the mask again. He raised his head from the wall, pushed his hair back, straightened his jacket, and walked back to the emergency room where they kept Victor. 

He had a lot of work to do.

* * *

This wasn’t how Yuuri had wanted to enter his first Game. He felt sluggish and tired, his breathing hard only because of the hollow he felt in his chest, created both from heartache and lack of sleep.

He’d barely slept the night before. Worries about Victor kept him up, and disturbed his dreams when he managed to sleep for an hour or two. And that word,  _ interpretation _ —it wouldn’t leave his mind.

He kept wishing for Chris to make some kind of contact with him, give him anything, even one word about what happened to Victor. But Chris never came, and Yuuri understood. He had known from the start that he couldn’t expect to be informed about everything going on all the time, especially while they were trying to move the strings of their own capture without anyone noticing. 

So, when morning came and the first order of the day told him to get in line to exit the cell, he knew he would have to leave his worries behind, believe that Victor had been strong enough to get through anything, and try to think of a way to test the  _ open to interpretation  _ theory before entering the arena.

The opportunity didn’t come. What other interpretation could he give to  _ go to dining hall  _ or  _ train  _ or  _ wear this suit  _ or  _ strap your weapons?  _ Before he knew it, it was late afternoon, Yuuri was dressed in something very similar to the generic Slayer militia, but with a yukata underneath his bulletproof vest—he rolled his eyes at the company’s weird attempt at adding  _ cultural  _ touches to his character—and he was standing among eleven other soldiers, all ready to leave for the arena. 

His heart was still beating fast, but Yuuri tried to think of every strategy he’d ever studied to calm himself down. He reminded himself that he was more than capable of getting through this. He’d studied these arenas more than anyone else. He’d watched tape after tape of Victor’s Games, even though it hurt to analyse every decision the General had made to ensure his victory; he’d kept watching even as his rage consumed him and he could barely see through the tears that ended up staining his notes.

* * *

Yuuri was startled out of his slumber by a hand on his shoulder. He’d fallen asleep on the desk again, with his head laying on his arms. His back screamed at him when he leaned back and his head span, dizzy and aching. 

“Take it easy, Yuuri. I told you you should sleep like a normal person for once in your life,” he heard Phichit tease him. Still, Yuuri recognized the worry in his friend’s voice. 

On the desk in front of Yuuri was a mess of papers with notes and diagrams and doodles, and the computer screen was paused in the aftermath of Victor’s 17th Game. It had become far too easy for him to recognize them by now.

“Haven’t you watched these things enough? I know you want to be prepared, and you do have a tendency to put us all in shame when it comes to being an overachiever, but damn, Yuuri,” Phichit said while trying to make sense of the mess on the desk. 

Yuuri didn’t acknowledge that.

“Why on earth did you wake me up at five in the morning?” Yuuri groaned when his eyes fell on the clock.

“We have a visitor. Now quit whining and go wash your face, you smell,” Phichit said, finally hauling him out of his chair and pushing him to the bathroom.

The word ‘visitor’ made Yuuri more alert than Phichit’s rude awakening. Visitor meant new information from Chris.

Yuuri didn’t expect Chris himself, however. Helsinki was too far from St. Petersburgh, and Yuuri prefered to have their inside man as close to Victor as possible at all times.

Hiding in Helsinki was safe for now, as Phichit worked out some last details of the cure after having tested it with success, and close enough to St. Petersburgh to make it there in one day. 

And all Yuuri could do in their hideout was wait and prepare for the nightmare to reach one more peak. 

“I thought you had enough nightmares already, I didn’t know you needed more material. Why do you keep torturing yourself with those tapes?” Phichit nagged when Yuuri emerged from the bathroom.

“You’re busy working on the cure, I’m making myself busy making sure I can survive long enough for this plan to work.” Yuuri groaned as he stretched his arms behind his head. “I would just be sitting around all day otherwise, trying not to go crazy. Do you want me to go crazy, Phichit?”

“You already know everything you can take from those tapes. You could help me with the cure instead.”

“I could help you hold your pen, you mean? I’ve tried. You always end up throwing that pen in my face and shooing me away,” Yuuri complained.

“And that’s always the best part,” Phichit laughed as they walked together to the living room.

Their hideout in Helsinki wasn’t much. It was an apartment building on the outskirts of one of the areas that had been bombed during the war, but was still mostly habitable. The building itself was fine other than a few cracks here and there, but it had been abandoned. The owner of the apartment had been a Slayer prisoner who had joined Yuuri’s rescue team after being freed. She had been the one to offer the place for this plan, not only because she couldn’t live that close to one of the labs again—the range of the transmission frequency for the chips was quite frightening—but also because after everything she’d been through, she’d do anything to see the end of the Games.

The apartment where Yuuri, Phichit and Mari lived was small: one bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, and a living area. The whole thing was cramped with computers, notes, and gear. Phichit had only bothered to bring in from the cars the most essential of his medical stuff, but even so, the essentials still took up most of the space in the kitchen. When the three of them did sleep, it was either on the sofas in the living room among all their crap, or on the futon in the bedroom. There was one bed, but after much consideration they decided it would serve better as more space to put all their gear on.    


Yuuri had already made a habit of just passing out wherever he was sitting after refusing to sleep for hours. He prefered to prepare in every way possible, reading maps of the arenas and watching footage. Sometimes, reality seemed kinder this way.

Yuuri entered the living room and immediately recognized their visitor, who was busy talking with Mari. When Chris couldn’t do something himself, he sent the next best person to get things done.

And that was Marcel.

Marcel Allaman had been a godsend from the moment he had asked Chris to recruit him. He was involved deep within the legal procedures of the Gamer company, and while he couldn’t really sway a lot of things against the company’s interests, he tried to minimize them. He was also a very important well of information with his mother in the company’s council, and along with Chris, he’d been one of the biggest sources of intel they had.

“I brought the floor plans of the St. Petersburg lab. And as an extra special gift, the updated maps of every arena they are preparing for the next season,” Marcel said after all the greetings were out of the way, pushing a duffel bag towards Yuuri. “There are also some notes on new gear they’ve ordered.”

“I thought one of the reasons they started the Games was to get rid of all the weapons left over from the war,” Yuuri seethed. “Now you’re telling us they’re ordering more?”

“They make more money from the Games than they ever made from the war,” Marcel shrugged. “And they don’t just get rid of them this way, they also advertise the products. You don’t want to know how much the deals for military gear have increased in the last year.”

“And they keep bringing in more prisoners from East Eurasia,” Mari added. “Mom and dad have been sending me reports. The Ingrian battalions haven’t stopped pillaging small towns and taking people by force.”

“How do they even keep  _ that  _ from leaking through the media?” Phichit wondered.

“They  _ own  _ the media,” Marcel pointed out. “It’s not that difficult to imagine that after the members of the organisation, the next ones to profit more from all this are the media outlets.”

“Isn’t there anyone with a fucking conscience left in that country?”

“You need to remember, the audience still thinks this is a broadcasted Game. It’s not that far-fetched. Technology is definitely advanced enough to recreate human-like graphics, like what they see in the Games,” Marcel said, but Yuuri didn’t pay much attention to their conversation. 

He opened the bag Marcel brought with him and dove into the sheets of paper and maps. He noticed some of the big changes in the arenas he’d already studied, but he would have to sit down and compare the new maps with the old. 

“Did they change the arenas just to keep the audience interested, or is there another reason?” Yuuri asked, and Marcel turned his attention to him and the maps.

“Mostly that, but they also wanted to use some of the new gear, and they replaced the traps with new ones. And of course, most of the older prisoners have memorized the arenas by now, so…”

“So, they want to get rid of the older prisoners in order to bring in the new ones faster.”

“Something like that,” Marcel sighed. “And ever since they took down the rescue teams, their labs have been filling up again with new prisoners, and they’re not sure they want to build more labs right now.”

“As if thirty-five labs across three countries aren’t enough.”

They went over the floor plans first, since they wouldn’t really need to make up a strategy about them. Yuuri only needed to get in. He wouldn’t be concerned with going unnoticed, since his goal would be to get caught. Still, he wanted to memorise every location and every room. It would make things much easier when the time came for the last part of their plan.

“Ground floor and first floor don’t really matter, it’s just the parking lot and offices,” Marcel said, gesturing at the large sheet on the floor. “But it’s most likely where they’ll catch you. You won’t be able to get higher than that with the staircase.” He pulled another sheet over the previous one. “The second floor is entirely a training area. That’s why they’ll catch you very quickly; there are almost always prisoners and guards there. It won’t take them long to get to you. But this is the third floor. Five different labs, infirmary, isolation rooms, and of course the ‘control rooms’. This is important. Remember these three rooms,” he said and circled the rooms on the floor plan. “Floors four, five, and six are just the cells.”

“Do you know which floor Victor’s cell is on?” Yuuri asked.

Marcel hesitated.

“If you don’t know, Chris will just tell me when—”

“It’s not that I don’t know, Yuuri,” Marcel said with a sigh. He turned back to the third floor plan and circled another room, on a far corner, away from the labs and the infirmary.

Isolation. Yuuri’s heart almost stopped in his chest for a second, and then started pounding, ringing in his ears.

“He’s been there for months. I don’t think they will ever release him.”

Yuuri let one more moment pass. What could he even say to that? And did he really want to know what Victor had done to put himself in permanent isolation?

“Phichit’s timing with the cure couldn’t be better.” Marcel broke the silence as Yuuri kept staring at the fourth circle on the paper.

“What do you mean?” Yuuri asked, already dreading the answer, because he had an idea of what Marcel meant. He just didn’t want it confirmed.

“Judging from how you didn’t know Victor’s in isolation, I doubt Chris has told you anything more about him, and I’m not sure how much  _ I  _ should say, but,” Marcel hesitated again. “Victor isn’t doing well. Yes, he wins the Games and he barely ever has a scratch on him, but his mind can’t take much more of this.”

Yuuri closed his eyes and threaded his fingers through his hair.

“He’s the only one to be used in the Games for so long, and to be honest, I don’t think even the guys who created this technology have figured out the consequences of the chip yet,” Marcel explained.

“We’ve been monitoring Victor’s transmission for a while now and Phichit hasn’t noticed anything too concerning, other than high levels of stress,” Yuuri tried to rebut, raising his head again, but Marcel interrupted him.

“I know, but that transmission can’t always pick up the mental consequences of what these people are going through.”

Yuuri remembered all the people who’d come back from the labs haunted and numb. Their psychiatrists always worked overtime with them, and Victor had been in the process of contacting more people who might have been willing to help on that aspect before everything went to hell. 

He’d seen the mental consequences. And he’d been aware that Victor would go through something very similar.

Maybe it was logical that his imprisonment had taken a greater toll on Victor. No one else had been forced through almost a year and fifty Games of it.

Yuuri remembered the image of Victor during his first Games. There had been some kind of terror behind his eyes, which Yuuri knew wasn’t for himself, but rather for the people who didn’t deserve to die by his hands. Gradually, that terror had transformed into anger, which translated into a certain kind of brutality during the Games; not against his opponents, but against everything else. There had been a few Games where the General had shot at anything, thrown as many grenades as possible and, once, even brought down a whole building. 

Then that anger had faded away into a dead light that burned every emotion from Victor’s eyes.

It became smirks of satisfaction. It became a natural, nonchalant reaction to danger and death that people would mistake for smugness.

And Yuuri could only pray to whatever deity would hear him that all that was part of the play; part of the order and the character that the media wanted to present.

Because he couldn’t bear to think that he had lost Victor again. Losing him once, the night he’d been captured, was enough.

“It won’t be long now. We’re set to leave for St. Petersburg in less than a month. I have to believe he’s strong enough to make it until then.”

“And then he will have to get through our plan,” Marcel added. “I know you guys made this whole plan to buy more time, but I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be better to just try and get him out now.”

Yuuri shook his head. “He wouldn’t want that. He would choose the plan that would save everyone, too. My Victor would endure anything for this plan to work, even if he doesn’t know the details right now.”

“And you’re willing to put him through all that and let him suffer more?”

“I can barely stand the thought—but it’s what he would want, Marcel. And once I get there, he won’t be fighting alone anymore.”

Marcel looked back at Yuuri with those gentle eyes that bore more sympathy than Yuuri could handle without breaking down. 

He turned back to his maps. Those he knew how to handle.

Yuuri and Marcel spent three days working together. They made the plan of how Yuuri would get inside first, and then they tackled the maps of the arenas. Marcel didn’t know much about military strategy or fighting in a battlefield, but he’d tried his best to gather as much information as possible from the meetings he’d attended and the discussions amongst his colleagues. Yuuri knew that he would dedicate the rest of his time before leaving for St. Petersburg committing every detail to memory. He would make plans and back-up plans for every single arena, and still be prepared for spur-of-the-moment plans when even the back-up plans wouldn’t work.

Bottom line, this mission meant too much; not just to him, but to every prisoner who’d been released, to every prisoner still forced to fight, to every soul they’d lost along the way, to Phichit, to Chris and Marcel.

And to Victor. 

Yuuri was certain; even if Victor suffered right now, he would choose this plan over and over if he had to.

And as much as Yuuri wanted to take him away from everything and everyone and protect him from harm until they both died of old age, they’d both chosen the hardest path years ago.

They couldn’t back down now.

* * *

Yuuri was finally faced with the reality of having to go out there and win. Kill or be killed. It wasn't the first time he'd been asked to do this, but it still felt so different. 

_ It  _ is _ different. _

Yuuri struggled to handle this as any other mission he’d taken in the past, in order to calm himself down. He tried to make himself believe that he wasn’t about to go out to murder the same prisoners he’d once tried to save. He just needed to survive for the end result. And the end result he had in mind was to save everyone.

He had a goal. He couldn't think about interpretation, now.

Soon, he was being ordered into a van along with other soldiers.

He wasn’t sure if the ride to the arena felt like seconds or hours. He kind of blacked out, his eyes avoiding the faces of the other people around him—prisoners, members of his team, people who probably expected him to protect them the same way Victor had during their Games.

And he could finally see this as more than just a means to an end. He’d known from the start this wasn’t just a dangerous game; he had volunteered to play with people’s lives in hopes that maybe the good he did would balance the evil.

_ The Games would have happened even without you here,  _ he thought to himself.  _ People would have died without you here. You can’t save all of them. But you need to buy time to save as many as you can by the end. _

That voice was steady and loud in his head.

It didn’t calm his heart much.

Yuuri only managed to escape his thoughts when the van stopped and they were ordered out and in line. His body moved again without his permission; it never stopped being scary, and he wondered if he would get used to it before the cure took full effect.

The prisoners exited the van in front of a closed gate. Guards stood around them, but neither Yuuri nor anyone else paid them any attention. They all focused on the projected map on the surface of the gate, and the countdown timer at the top.

Yuuri recognized the arena immediately. He quickly ran through all the strategies he’d thought up, all the traps Marcel had pointed out, all the secrets he’d uncovered on his own.

Everything was becoming more and more real by the second. Yuuri wasn’t sure if he wanted the Game to just  _ start, _ so that he wouldn’t have time to hyperventilate, or if he needed some time to try and calm down before he was ordered to go out there and kill people.

The clock said three more minutes before the start of the Game. The projection on the wall gave a few pointers about the arena.  _ Completely unhelpful,  _ Yuuri thought. They only showed the point where each team would be at the beginning of the Game and the area they would cover.

And that’s when Yuuri realised something. 

He wouldn’t be with the team trying to get through the arena. 

He would be the final obstacle.

They wanted him to be the final straw that would take down one of their best teams without including the General, introducing a new villain. A rival to take down the General’s elite team while he was indisposed. A rival for the General to seek out for revenge.

Of course they would want to make him the villain. He knew this is what Chris would push for, to make this new and exciting rivalry the reason why they would be able to draw out the situation, but as Yuuri watched it happen, it only infuriated him more. 

As the clock counted down the last minute before the gates opened, orders starting invading his mind.

_ You and your team will stay within the area designated to you. _

_ As the captain of your team, you are to direct them according to your strategy based on this map.  _

_ Your mission is to win the Game by killing all the members of the opposing team. _

_ You will not attack the cameras. _

Yuuri saw where that sentence left room for interpretation. But the order explicitly said that he had to kill the other team.  _ No changing that, then. _

The clock counted the last ten seconds, and Yuuri memorised the area he would have to cover. They would exit into a road surrounded by tall buildings, and it would be easy for all of them to hide there and just shoot anyone coming their way. This was how the order worked to pull out of the mind the best way to win the Game. And that’s why Slayer was so brutal. 

Yuuri didn’t really need to study the map too much. He’d already planned five different strategies for this arena while preparing for the Games back in Helsinki, and the best way to win the Game formed in his mind before the order even arrived. But would the bastards be satisfied with such a simple plan? They wanted him to make a show, to declare himself the new legend of Slayer. Why, then, put him in this arena, where the best-case scenario for him would be so obvious?

_ Because they have something else up their sleeves. And the first option wouldn’t be enough to win. _

_ “There is a chance they will try to rig this Game, too, give the other teams very specific orders about how to attack you. They won’t kill you easily with a sniper, that’s for sure,”  _ Chris had told him during one of their early discussions, when they were still trying to finalize the plan.

_ “What other Games have they rigged?” _

_ “Do you really think Victor would smirk during these Games?” _

The gates opened. 

_ Proceed. _

Yuuri followed his team outside. The day was coming to an end, the sky filled with clouds painted pink from the last rays of the sun as it gave way to stars, the air cold, and the first breeze that touched his face made him shiver. The tall, abandoned buildings loomed over him on each side of the road. 

If the obvious answer was to go inside the buildings, he would have to separate himself from most of his team. But then he would be alone and open to a mass attack, since the plan included the members of the team being in different buildings and on different floors, to better cover the full field beneath them.

And that was how they would force him to give them a show. 

Which meant that the first option—hiding up in the buildings and shooting everyone—wouldn’t be enough to win.

Maybe this was Yuuri’s way to interpret the order. 

Yuuri decided, then, to give them a show on his own terms. He would eliminate the chance of being pushed around and cornered. They controlled enough of his life, as it was.

The Games usually lasted about an hour. He had at least forty minutes before their opponents reached them.    


The silence of the bombed and abandoned city around them made a jarring difference to the tense image the broadcast usually made of the Game. They used music that sounded like it belonged to a video game or an action movie, to give the viewers a better “experience”, but there was none of that in the arena. The could only hear their own bated breaths and the distant cries of the gulls.

Following the orders, the members of Yuuri’s team waited around him for his commands. Mickey was one of them. He wasn’t sure if the cameras had started filming him yet or not, but Yuuri would force them to switch their focus to him soon.

He wanted to ask his teammates if they trusted him. But he was only allowed to give orders. If he said anything else, he would be found out.

Besides, they wouldn’t be able to answer.

“Get to the basements of the surrounding buildings. If I remember this arena correctly, the foundations should be painted with explosives. Come back here as soon as possible and report. I know where to find the trigger.”

The other soldiers barely had the chance to look surprised before their bodies carried out the order.

Yuuri turned around and looked at the building that had been their starting point. Upon the closed gates stood a statue. He made his way over there, pushing the vines away to the left of the gates to find the holes in the wall. And he started climbing.

* * *

The Slayer fans around the world had been waiting for excitement for this Game with the new character, Yuuri Katsuki, who was supposed to take the whole thing by storm. In front of their screens, in bars, at their own homes, at public squares with gigantic projections—they weren’t sure if they were disappointed or even more excited that the new character wasn’t in the first two teams.

Besides, the good stuff usually came closer to the end of the Game.

The first battle started, and the cameras worked hard to capture the best moments for the audience. Viewers were surprised when, mid-fight, the image on their screens changed. 

It showed an abandoned street and a dark-haired man standing alone, looking ahead. He didn’t look like much at first glance, but everyone recognized him from the ads as the new main character. It was the first time in the history of the Games that a character was introduced like this, building up so much anticipation, with the dramatic music turning low and sweet when the cameras focused on him before cutting quickly back to the pained faces, blood, and screams of the ongoing battle.

Many of the viewers, while watching the Game, recognized the spot where the new character stood, and thought that the best tactic would be to hide every member of the team high on the buildings and kill the opponents from there. They also assumed it was exactly what the captain of the team had already done, when they saw him standing there alone. 

What they didn’t expect was for him to climb onto the statue behind him, or for his teammates to come back and say something they couldn’t hear because of the music, and probably also because the director wanted to keep the surprise just  a little bit longer.

* * *

“We counted eight buildings with detonators,” Mickey informed him once everyone was back, about fifteen minutes later.

“Good. Put on your gas masks and stand back.”

* * *

The Yuuri Katsuki on the screen nodded and motioned for them to step closer to the wall. 

The cameras flickered back to the ongoing battle again. It was nearing the end, only two members of the first obstacle team still standing.

Then a close-up of Katsuki’s teammates as they all put on their gas masks, some straggling rays of sunlight gleaming on them.

A close-up of Katsuki as he put on his own mask.

The camera then moved to his hand pressing something at the back of the statue.

“Oh, shit,” someone in a bar livestreaming the Game said, gripping their hair with tight fists.

The music changed to something more fast-paced and dramatic.

And then the cameras switched to a panoramic view of the arena as everything turned silent, both in the Game and in every room where people watched.

Every viewer knew something was about to happen. The silence counted their erratic heartbeats and their shallow breathing. Everyone was afraid to disturb the moment before whatever was about to happen.

 

A resounding boom echoed within the Game. First, the muted blasts that seemed to come from underground. Then the rumbling of gravel falling apart, the shaking of the earth. Entire blocks of buildings leading to the last obstacle team’s starting point collapsing, one after the other.

The viewing parties were going crazy, screaming and cursing at the image of a large part of a city falling to pieces, just like that.

The cameras focused for a few seconds on the other remaining teams as they heard the blasts and rumbles of the buildings falling, terror in their eyes as they turned to look at the rising cloud of dust and smoke over where their mission was supposed to end.

And Katsuki’s team watching all of it in silence, standing still as statues with their weapons behind their backs, waiting for the breeze to blow away the dust.

* * *

Lightning tore through the sky and the sun disappeared completely behind the clouds and over the horizon. A light drizzle started falling from the sky to wash away the last of the dust still hanging in the air.

Any other time, Yuuri would have cursed his luck, but now the rain would help clear the area. They would have tried to push him in a corner and surround him inside one of those buildings, but Yuuri had just made the whole area designated to his team an open battlefield littered with ruins. The collapsing buildings had taken down the streetlights, so the organizers would be forced to bring spotlights.

_ Good,  _ he thought.  _ All eyes on me. _

Yuuri took the time to look at his teammates as they waited for their opponents to arrive. They’d taken off their masks once the dust had settled, and he could see their faces clearly from where he still stood next to the statue. He hoped he’d be able to protect them in this fight, just like Victor had. Yuuri closed his eyes and tried to center himself, concentrate on his “winning means keeping my team alive” mantra.

He wasn’t sure how that would work when the order was still in charge of his actions. He knew that the moment he realised the enemy was near, his own instincts would be overwhelmed by the command to kill them. 

He chose to give himself a moment of peace before hell began, thinking back to his happiest moments; with his family, his friends, and his Victor. He knew he would emerge from this fight as the same person he’d always been—but his memories would stay, just the same. 

The rain had drenched everything by the time Yuuri caught the first sign of the other team being close. He lost control of his mind, then. He gave orders to his teammates before he climbed down from his spot on top of the gate, and they ran to take cover amongst the ruins of the fallen buildings. Yuuri followed them.

Lightning tore through the sky again, and the whole world trembled at the sound.

* * *

Yuuri barely understands what happens next. It’s different, watching the Games and being in them. He doesn’t remember making any decisions, he doesn’t move a single centimetre because he wants to. It all comes from the message the chip keeps sending to his mind: win. He remembers firing his guns and moving his fists, even throwing some of the rubble around to hit one of his opponents on the head while he tries to kill one of Yuuri’s teammates. 

And he remembers, very clearly, how his arms aim his weapon at Emil.

Yuuri remembers the moment Emil, the last person of the enemy team, falls to the ground. No ceremony, no last forgiving expression on his face, no glory. And at that same moment, Yuuri is crowned the victor of the Game.

The prince of the Katsuki Dynasty, threatening the reign of the hero of Ingria.

* * *

It took maybe a minute after the end of the Game for the last orders to lose effect. Yuuri felt the moment they did, because suddenly all the exertion of the battle brought him down. His knees hit the bloodied ground, and his hands followed soon after. He could usually take more than this, but his stomach was turning as if he was suffering from a hangover, and his head was spinning. Was this why a person couldn’t bear too many of these Games? How had Victor done it? 

Yuuri lifted his head just a little, his breath laboured, and saw that everyone else was in more or less the same condition as him. 

Then his eyes fell on Mickey. He was wracked by powerful sobs, hunched over Emil’s dead body. Yuuri couldn’t take the sight. His eyes filled with tears and his stomach lurched, emptying out the few things he’d managed to eat before the Game.

They didn’t give the survivors any time to collect themselves. 

_ Get in line and return to starting point. _

Only seven of the twelve obeyed. Three were dead. Two more were still alive, but too injured to stand up, and Yuuri watched as their inability to obey the order of the chip slowly killed them. The rest ignored their pain as they walked back through the gate, victorious.

_ Board the van. _

They all sat across each other on the way back to the lab, still trying to get a hold of their emotions and their breathing. Mickey was still crying, his hands gripping his hair like he wanted to tear it out of his scalp, but the sobs had stopped. Most of them were bleeding in one way or another, and Yuuri finally took time to notice his own wounds: a few cuts across his arms, and one wrist a bit strained. He let his head fall against the side of the van and went through his breathing exercises. He wasn’t sure he needed them, but it was better than focusing on the feeling of his body not belonging to him. 

He had known this experience would change him. Horror like this, humans being used like toys, literally a game for the entertainment of others—it was a new low for the world. It could drive one into self-loathing and desperation like nothing else. Yuuri once again came to admire the people who endured it. With a bit of luck, this would be the last time he would have to go into an arena and kill, because after another Game like this, he was sure the first thing he would do after the orders released him would be to put a gun to his own head.

Even as calm as he struggled to remain, he tried to not think how he had looked to the viewers, how the cameras had made him look. He could feel his own desperation building inside him, but he was also desperate to keep that for a moment with more privacy. 

So he breathed, and listened to his teammates cry while he waited. 

_Follow your instincts and choose the other path…_

_Hoodoo - Muse_

**Author's Note:**

> This is where I should probably warn you that I'm a slow writer and very busy at the moment but I intent to continue this. Even if it takes me ages. 
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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